Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Duriavenator/archive1
Blurb[edit]
Duriavenator is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now England about 168 million years ago. Fossil jaw bones of a dinosaur collected near Sherborne, Dorset, in 1882 were considered by Richard Owen to belong to Megalosaurus bucklandii. By 1964 it was recognised as a different species, and in 1974 it was moved to M. hesperis. In 2008, it was moved again to its own genus, Duriavenator "Dorset hunter". It was 5–7 m (16–23 ft) long and weighed 1 t (2,200 lb). The main bone of the upper jaw is distincive; it has a deep groove on the upper surface with numerous air-filled openings, and smaller foramina on the lower part that connected with the front bone of the upper jaw. It had about four teeth in the premaxilla, 14–16 in rest of the upper jaw, and about 14–15 in the lower jaw. The long front teeth may have been used for plucking and grasping food.Phylogenetic analyses have shown it to be among the oldest tetanuran theropods, and to belong in the family Megalosauridae. (Full article...)