Fossilized Skull of Dog-Sized Daemonosaurus Discovered at Ghost Ranch, NM
Posted on April 22, 2011
Daemonosaurus chauliodus, a new species of dinosaur, is estimated to have been about the size of a tall dog. The size of its head is compared to a quarter in the sketch above. A team of scientists, led by the Smithsonian Institution, discovered the dinosaur's fossilized skull and neck vertebrae at at Ghost Ranch, N.M. The dinosaur was named after the word "daimon," a Greek word meaning evil spirit, because it was found at Ghost Ranch.
The scientists do not know exactly how long Daemonosaurus because they only found its skull and neck. The skull is 5.5 inches long from the tip of its snout to the back of the skull. Daemonosaurus had forward-slanted teeth in its upper jaw.
Daemonosaurus was dated to the latest part of the Triassic Period approximately 205 million years ago, just before the beginning of the Jurassic Period. The scientists believe Daemonosaurus helps connect an evolutionary link between two groups of dinosaurs, early predatory dinosaurs and theropod dinosaurs.
Hans Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the team's findings, says, "Various features of the skull and neck in Daemonosaurus indicate that it was intermediate between the earliest known predatory dinosaurs from South America and more advanced theropod dinosaurs. One such feature is the presence of cavities on some of the neck vertebrae related to the structure of the respiratory system."
Smithsonian Magazine has a chart showing an evolutionary tree of early theropod dinosaurs here.