Fukuistein's Monster
Despite being the birthplace of Godzilla, relatively few dinosaurs are known from Japan. One of the most notable is Fukuiraptor, uncovered in the Kitadani Formation in the Fukui Prefecture, and described by paleontologists Philip Currie and Yoichi Azuma in 2000. About the size of a Siberian tiger, this predator is one of the better-known megaraptorans, an enigmatic branch of Cretaceous theropods also known from Utah, Argentina, and Australia. Depending on who you ask, they were either the last of the carnosaurs, cousins to the better-known allosaurs and carcharodontosaurs, or a sister group to the tyrannosaurs. Fukuiraptor only complicates matters because it seems to have features suggestive of both carnosaurs and tyrannosaurs (or to use more exact and technical terms, allosauroids and tyrannosauroids).
Incidentally, other Kitadani dinosaurs include the ornithopod Fukuisaurus and the sauropod Fukuititan, also co-described and named by Azuma. Creative.
Despite being the birthplace of Godzilla, relatively few dinosaurs are known from Japan. One of the most notable is Fukuiraptor, uncovered in the Kitadani Formation in the Fukui Prefecture, and described by paleontologists Philip Currie and Yoichi Azuma in 2000. About the size of a Siberian tiger, this predator is one of the better-known megaraptorans, an enigmatic branch of Cretaceous theropods also known from Utah, Argentina, and Australia. Depending on who you ask, they were either the last of the carnosaurs, cousins to the better-known allosaurs and carcharodontosaurs, or a sister group to the tyrannosaurs. Fukuiraptor only complicates matters because it seems to have features suggestive of both carnosaurs and tyrannosaurs (or to use more exact and technical terms, allosauroids and tyrannosauroids).
Incidentally, other Kitadani dinosaurs include the ornithopod Fukuisaurus and the sauropod Fukuititan, also co-described and named by Azuma. Creative.
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