Overview

• The peer-reviewed description formally names the species Joaquinraptor casali and was published September 23 in Nature Communications.
• The partial skeleton from the Lago Colhué Huapi Formation in Chubut preserves much of the skull, limbs, ribs and vertebrae, making it among the most complete megaraptorans known.
• Researchers estimate the predator was about 7 meters long, weighed over 1,000 kilograms, and was at least 19 years old at death.
• Stratigraphy places the animal in the latest Cretaceous of central Patagonia, indicating megaraptorans occupied apex predator niches in warm, humid floodplain ecosystems near the end of the dinosaur era.
• Phylogenetic analysis places Megaraptora within Coelurosauria as sister to Tyrannosauroidea, and the team cautions the crocodile bone association suggests but does not prove a feeding event.