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Saberrex — Siats meekerorum
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Published: 2013-11-23 01:23:41 +0000 UTC; Views: 2264; Favourites: 33; Downloads: 21
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Description
A male Siats stakes a claim on a dead iguanodont he has discovered.
Siats meekerorum is a new theropod dating back to the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous 100 million years ago, and is the first neovenatorid allosaur from North America. Found in 2008 and described formally on 11/22/2012 and named after a man-eating monster from Ute Indian legend, it was found in Utah and is known from the remains of a 30 foot juvenile. An adult would likely have been 40 feet in length, making it almost as large as Tyrannosaurus rex, and rivaling Acrocanthosaurus atokensis as the second biggest cretaceous theropod from North America. The presence of Siats indicates that large carnosaurs were later surviving in North America than previously believed, and that tyrannosaurs did not rise to dominance until they had disappeared or from getting larger. As a neovenatorid, it is related to Neovenator itself, Gualicho and possibly to Deltadromeus.
My rendition of Siats meekerorum and only the 4th Illustration of Siats to appear on DA. As Siats is related to Megaraptor and Australovenator, I am certain that it had powerful arms and very large thumb claws for tearing into its prey and for holding it while the jaws ripped food apart. I was certainly in shock when i saw this theropod on the news, and seriously have begun to wonder again how allosaurs went extinct in North America, because this animal made the primitive tyrannosaurs run for their lives.
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Comments: 31
I'm so glad north america has a megaraptor of it's own
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Neovenatorid, actually. I have to change the description based on the newest evidence.
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what's the name of the dinosaur it just killed?
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Eolambia, but i was trying at first for just an iguanodont. it wasn't until i looked back in the books that Siats and Eolambia coexisted.
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4th Siats! Nice! I've wondered about that too. The allosaurs seemed to have been doing so well in North America, and then were seemingly beat into submission by the tyrannosaurs. Anyways, nice job!
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Thanks. i wonder if climate change killed Siats and its kin in America, or if Tyrannosaurids showed up and started outcompeting them and outsmarting them because the tyrannosaurs were much more intelligent.
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Brain size doesn't mean intellect, so outcompeting and outsmarting them seems unlikely. It was probably the other way around, with the extinction of carnosaurs allowing tyrannosaurs to take over.
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That was my major problem with Planet Dinosaur (blatantly saying tyrannosaurs are better than carnosaurs and that carnosaurs are stupid and weak)
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i doubt they were weak. i think the tyrannosaurs were just better at punching through armored prey.
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True, but that makes them worse at shredding sauropods.
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maybe, but if they could take a deep-punch bite out of a sauropod's legs or neck, they could inflict serious damage, fatal even if it went to the bone. look at Tarbosaurus, for example. it has a locking mechanism in its jaws to deal with sauropod prey like Nemegtosaurus.
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I think that locking mechanism has more to do with suffocating smaller prey.
And I have serious doubts about those gape-limited jaws fitting around such legs.
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well, no one's quite certain from what i've read in books on tyrannosaurids, particularly tyrannosaurus and tarbosaurus, on just how wide they can open their mouths. Nemegtosaurus wasn't that big either from what i remember. (maybe 50 feet). it may have been heavier, but it really wasn't that much longer than Tarbosaurus.
As for your idea about Tarbosaurs asphyxiating smaller prey, i won't rule it out, but i believe it quite unlikely to be used but seldom. Tyrannosaurids and most other theropods, would not likely have aimed for the neck as much as mammalian predators. it's likely they aimed just as much for the tail and the flanks, likely the area where leg meets body and the skin was thinnest. that of course results in easy disembowelment, or in the case of the tail, easy disablement if they bit the caudiofemoralis.
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Tyrannosaur teeth aren't exactly made for disembowelling, blunted by crushing bone and lacking a cutting edge.
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perhaps not, but they can still inflict a devastating wound. they do still have serrations on their teeth that bind the teeth to the flesh and allow the predator to rip flesh from its prey. messy, but effective.
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It is devastating on prey with lots of small bones or armour, not so much on sauropods.
And in any case PD blatantly said tyrannosaurs outcompeted carnosaurs to extinction, which is nonsense, they didn't even hunt the same prey.
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that we know of. the fact is we don't know the true nature of such interactions.
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I suppose that would make sense. The tyannosaurs were seemingly better adapted to the colder climate. And it certainly didn't take them long to evolve into monstrous predators like Lythronax.
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true. Lythronax appears about 20 million years after Siats does. something happened that caused the Tyrannosaurs to take over. i know they were better pursuit predators for sure.
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