Assembling Saurophaganax: Giant Jurassic Predator Cast

Here you can see the massive Saurophaganax skeleton cast fully laid out, showcasing the sheer scale of one of the largest Jurassic theropods before it’s raised into its towering display pose.

Snax! Yes, I am calling this #Saurophaganax, despite the paper by Danison et al. that recently came out, as I disagree with assessment of its holotype. We have a plan to put my thoughts to the test, stay tuned! However, if your museum would like #Allosaurus anax, this skeleton can be called that :-).

Brandon, DJ, and I are laying out this beast to see which of the casts were made from original bones, and from which Pits they originated. The recent paper looked at one locality, but there are a few sites in the same area, from which some of these were cast.

As laid out it measures ~36’ long. The tail goes on for days (or for about 20’ ;-))!

While watching a road crew at work a pair of cowboys discovered a bone graveyard in northwest Oklahoma near the town of Kenton, 2 miles from the New Mexico border and 10 miles from the Colorado border.

The bones were “excavated” by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers from a place called Quarry 1 within Pit 1. I use excavate in quotations because all of the work was done by people who had zero experience in collecting or preparing fossils. They were given jobs by the Government during the Great Depression and this crew was assigned to take the bones out of the ground. They used gunpowder to blow ‘em loose and heavy hammers and chisels to separate bone from rock. Unfortunately for paleontologists today, the matrix is of a very similar color to the bone, meaning unskilled hands carving away the surrounding rock were often removing the exterior of the bone, removing nearly all diagnostic characters to get to the spongy bone that they could recognize as bone. Langston (1989) does a fantastic job recounting the detailed history of this locality. Seeing what could have been makes me sad.

The giant claw (left digit I, OMNH 780) is massive but otherwise looks like Allosaurus, just on tremendous growth hormones :-). It certainly makes the huge #Torvosaurus hand claw look small, something I didn’t think was possible.

Keep in mind these claws would have had keratinous sheaths on them, extending them possibly an additional 30% in length.

An awesome way to play on a perfect Arizona day!

#JurassicPredator #Theropod #DinosaurSkeleton #FossilCast #DinosaurExhibit #Paleontology #MuseumDisplay #FossilCrates

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