Cryolophosaurus, "cold-crested lizard" , famous for being the first carnivorous dinosaur discovered on the continent of Antarctica. In the slideshow below, you'll discover ten interesting facts about this early Jurassic theropod.
01
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Cryosaurus is the second dinosaur discovered in Antarctica
As you can imagine, the continent of Antarctica is not a hotbed of fossil discoveries - not because it lost dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era, but because the climate conditions made long-term exploration almost impossible. When its partial skeleton was unearthed in 1990, Cryolophosaurus became the second dinosaur discovered on the vast southern continent, after the plant-eating Antarctica, which lived more than 100 million years later.
02
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Cryolophosaurus is informally known as "Elvisaurus"
The most distinctive feature of Cryolophosaurus is the single crest on the top of its head, which is not from front to back (like Dilophosaurus and other crested dinosaurs), Instead, they are arranged left and right, like the Pompadour of the 1950s. That's why this dinosaur is affectionately called "Elvisaurus" by paleontologists, after the singer Elvis Presley. (The purpose of this badge remains a mystery, but as with human Elvis, it may be a sexually selected trait designed to attract females of the species.
03
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Cryosaurus was the largest carnivorous dinosaur of its time
As theropods (meat-eating dinosaurs) go, Cryolophosaurus was far from the largest ever, only about 20 feet from head to tail. Weighs approximately 1,000 pounds. But while this dinosaur didn't reach the level of later carnivores like Tyrannosaurus rex or Spinosaurus, it was almost certainly an apex predator in the early Jurassic, before theropods (and their plant-eating prey) had grown Huge size in the late Mesozoic era.
04
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Cryosaurus may (or may not) be related to Dilophosaurus
The exact evolutionary relationships of Cryolophosaurus remain a matter of debate. This dinosaur was once thought to be closely related to other early theropods, such as the evocative Synraptor; at least one prominent paleontologist (Paul Sereno) designated it as a distant precursor to Allosaurus; Other experts trace its kinship to the similarly crowned (and often misunderstood) Dilophosaurus; the latest research insists it is a close relative of Sinosaurus.
05
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It was once believed that the only specimen of the cryosaurus was suffocated to death
The paleontologist who discovered Cryosaurus made a shocking mistake, claiming that his specimen had been replaced by a prosauropod, a giant sauropod of the late Mesozoic Era. The ribs of the dinosaur-like elongated bipedal forebody) were suffocated to death. However, further research revealed that these ribs actually belonged to Cryolophosaurus itself and were moved closer to the skull after it died. (It is still possible, however, that Cryolophosaurus preyed on prosauropods; see Slide #10.
06
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Cryosaurus lived in the early Jurassic period
As mentioned in slide #4, Cryosaurus lived approximately 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic Period—thousands from what is now modern South America. A group of dinosaurs evolved only about 40 million years ago. At the time, the supercontinent Gondwana—which includes South America, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica—had recently separated from Pangea, a dramatic geological event reflected in the striking similarities between dinosaurs in the southern hemisphere.
07
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Frozen dragons live in surprisingly temperate climates
Today, Antarctica is a vast, cold, nearly inaccessible continent whose population can range into the thousands. But that wasn't the case 200 million years ago, when Gondwana's counterpart to Antarctica was closer to the equator and the world's overall climate was hotter and wetter. Even then, Antarctica was cooler than the rest of the globe, but it was still temperate enough to support a lush ecology (we haven't found much fossil evidence yet).
08
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The frozen dragon has a small brain
It was not until the late Cretaceous that some carnivorous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex and Troton, took steps toward above-average intelligence The pace of evolution. Like most large theropods of the Jurassic and Late Triassic Periods - not to mention the dumber plant-eaters - Cryosaurus was endowed with a rather small brain, a result of the analysis of the dinosaur's skull. High-tech scanning to measure.
09
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Frostosaurus may have preyed on Glacialosaurus
Due to the lack of fossil remains, we still don’t know much about the daily life of cryosaurs. We do know, however, that this dinosaur shared its territory with Glacialisaurus, a "frozen lizard" that was a similarly sized prosauropod. However, since it is difficult for an adult cryosaurus to take down an adult glacosaurus, this predator may target young or sick or old individuals (or clean up their corpses after they die of natural causes).
10
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Cryosaurus reconstructed from a single fossil specimen
Some theropods, such as Allosaurus, are known from multiple nearly complete fossil specimens, allowing paleontologists to A wealth of information can be gathered about their anatomy and behavior. Cryolophosaurus lies at the other end of the fossil spectrum: to date, the only specimen of this dinosaur is a single, incomplete specimen discovered in 1990, and there is only one named species (C. elliotti). Hopefully this situation will improve with future fossil expeditions to the Antarctic continent!
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