The term
"predatory dinosaurs" refers to a group of dinosaurs that were carnivorous, meaning they hunted and ate other animals to survive. They were the top predators of their time, similar to how lions are considered the top predators in today's animal kingdom.
Full definition
They served primarily to protect the
smaller predatory dinosaurs — which would eventually give rise to birds — from losing too much body heat.
Scientists have used state - of - the - art imaging techniques to examine the cracks, fractures and breaks in the bones of a 150 million - year -
old predatory dinosaur.
The tracks, measuring between 36 and 47 centimeters in length, probably represent two different species
of predatory dinosaurs from the Theropoda group.
«Our results add a new level of detail to our understanding of the way
large predatory dinosaurs interacted with the world around them,» says Elis Newham, a University of Southampton PhD researcher and study co-author.
Although we are only starting to learn about them, the long - snouted tyrannosaurs were apparently one of the main groups of
predatory dinosaurs in Asia.»
The petite 1.2 - metre - long Eoraptor followed a few years later; both were identified as very primitive two -
legged predatory dinosaurs called theropods, a group which ultimately gave rise to Tyrannosaurus rex and modern birds.
Nicholas Longrich of Yale University was examining T. rex bones when he found that four bore large tooth marks that could only have been made by another
big predatory dinosaur.
He claimed that a small
predatory dinosaur called Deinonychus, a relative of the raptors made famous in Jurassic Park, was built for an active and fast - moving life; in other words, it was more avian or mammalian than reptilian.
He found 40 - year - old scientific papers suggesting that the velociraptor — a
swift predatory dinosaur — used a similar body - stabilizing trick.
Members of Theropoda, the only clade of
predominantly predatory dinosaurs, were successful predators partly due to a unique, deeply serrated tooth structure that allowed them to easily tear through the flesh and bone of other dinosaurs, according to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports.
The impact of massive trauma, they discovered, seemed to be shrugged off by
many predatory dinosaurs — fossil bones often showed a multitude of grizzly healed injuries, most of which would prove fatal to humans if not medically treated.
This bizarre subfamily appears to have evolved a lifestyle different from all
other predatory dinosaurs,» says Philip Currie of the University of Alberta.
In May the discovery team from the Utah Geological Survey and the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah dubbed the dinosaur «a missing link between small -
bodied predatory dinosaurs and the highly specialized and bizarre plant - eating therizinosaurs.»
Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim garnered fame — and controversy — when he found the largest
predatory dinosaur ever known.
And in recent years, paleontologists have found collections of fossils resembling T. rex that
suggest predatory dinosaurs may have traveled in hunting packs.
Thanks to these fossil finds, we now know that birds descend from a branch of medium -
sized predatory dinosaurs, the so - called theropods.
This key will be very valuable, as a whole series of bird -
like predatory dinosaurs has been described in recent years, mainly from China, which has greatly complicated the taxonomical classification of the group.
A century of digging found no teeth from
giant predatory dinosaurs, a sign that pterosaurs were the biggest and baddest predators on the island.
Flight either began with small,
fleet predatory dinosaurs leaping from the ground into the air, or with other animals that learnt to fly whilst jumping to earth from trees.
Described in the latest issue of the journal PLoS ONE, it was by far the scariest large
predatory dinosaur alive at that time during the Late Cretaceous Period.
Nicholas Longrich of Yale University was examining T. Rex bones for signs that mammals had gnawed on them when he found that four bones bore large tooth marks that could only have been made by another
big predatory dinosaur.
«Revealing the healing of «dino - sores»: Examining broken bones in 150 - million - year -
old predatory dinosaur.»
Dinosaur feathers provided key support for Ostrom's earlier proposal that birds had evolved from small,
swift predatory dinosaurs.
Chief among the criticisms were the animal's hindlimbs, significantly smaller compared with other
large predatory dinosaurs, as well as other researchers» theoretical Spinosaurus models.
Alvarezsaurids were unusual
small predatory dinosaurs that had very short but powerfuly built arms that ended in a single large digit.»
And the 1996 discovery of the feathered dinosaur Sinosauropteryx thoroughly transformed our vision of the two -
legged predatory dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex, that eventually gave rise to birds.
Although several important groups
of predatory dinosaurs have been discovered in Mongolia, Halszka does not belong to any of them, having a number of strange features that are mostly absent among dinosaurs, but are shared by reptilian and avian groups with aquatic or semiaquatic ecologies.
Paleontologists at Ludwig - Maximilians - Universitaet (LMU) in Munich correct a case of misinterpretation: The first fossil «Archaeopteryx» to be discovered is actually
a predatory dinosaur belonging to the anchiornithid family, which was previously known only from finds made in China.
Only a single footprint comes from
a predatory dinosaur,» explains Prof. Stinnesbeck.
Velociraptor: A fine, feathered fiend Velociraptor,
the predatory dinosaur immortalized in the Jurassic Park films, was more of an overgrown chicken than a reptilian beast.
Just like later birds,
these predatory dinosaurs had feathers — long before Archaeopteryx lifted itself off the ground.
«Today, predators are largely active in dim light conditions,» says Schmitz, and his earlier work suggested that
some predatory dinosaurs were nocturnal.
Longrich says cannibalism was probably common in
predatory dinosaurs, just as modern large carnivores, including bears, komodo dragons and some big cats, often turn cannibal.
Anatomical and aerodynamic analyses of fossils and living birds show that birds evolved from small,
predatory dinosaurs that lived on the ground
But paleontologists often focus on smaller fryespecially with regard to the origin of birds, which are believed to have evolved from petite,
predatory dinosaurs.
Predatory dinosaurs might have been much smarter — and thus, perhaps even scarier — than we currently believe.
Using similar techniques, another team of researchers studied how one type of large
predatory dinosaur — Allosaurus — might have fed.