New giant 'raptor from hell' discovered!
For those who haven’t seen, recently a new ‘giant raptor from Hell’ was discovered! As a cousin to the infamous Velociraptor, it represents one of the largest members of the group known as Dromaeosauridae, which were the close relatives of early birds. The new giant raptor lived alongside other beasties like T. rex and comes from the latest Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation, where it would have been a mid-tier ambush predator. It comes fully equipped with the largest ‘sickle’ claws currently known from these guys, making it one helluva lethal killing machine. Perhaps most importantly, the new species, named Dakotaraptor is the largest known ‘raptor’ that possesses unequivocal evidence of a ‘true’ wing formed from feathers. Anyway, being a greedy little grad student, I wrote about the story for Discover Magazine and also for EarthTouch, so take your pick!
Is it possible that Dakotaraptor and Acheroraptor are the same animal?
I don’t think so – Dakotaraptor is more closely related to dromaeosaurines, whereas Archeroraptor is more closely related to velociraptorines. So they’re both closely related, but part of different sub-families.
However, it is unusual that they’re both named from non-overlapping material, so I wouldn’t discount them being the same animal completely!
Thanks for the info. So in theory, Acheroraptor would have had a thinner more gracile build, while Dakotaraptor would have been more stocky and muscular. You can see pictures that I drew of both Acheroraptor (an original inaccurate version and an improved more accurate version) and Dromaeosaurus on my blog “Dinosaurs and Barbarians”.
https://dinosaursandbarbarians.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/dromaeosaurus/
https://dinosaursandbarbarians.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/acheroraptor-revised/