Saurornitholestes Langstoni Claw

Description

Saurornitholestes Langstoni Claw is museum quality polyurethane replica made in USA. The Saurornitholestes Langstoni Claw measures 1 3/4 inches.

Saurornitholestes or lizard-bird thief is a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous of Canada (Alberta) and the United States (Montana, New Mexico, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina).

Two species have been named: Saurornitholestes langstoni in 1978 and Saurornitholestes sullivani in 2015. Saurornitholestes was a small bipedal meat-eating dinosaur, equipped with a sickle-claw on the foot.

Two more complete and larger partial skeletons (RTMP 88.121.39 and MOR 660), dozens of isolated bones, and scores of teeth are known from the badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta; most of these are housed at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, in Drumheller, Alberta and remain undescribed. The Alberta and Montana remains are usually attributed to the single species Saurornitholestes langstoni, though they come from a variety of rock formations indicating a wide span of time; for example, the Oldman Formation dated to about 77 million years ago and the upper Two Medicine Formation (about 72 million years ago). Similar teeth are found in younger deposits, dated to around 70 to 69 million years ago, but whether they represent S. langstoni or a different, related species is unknown. Neonate-sized Saurornitholestes fossils have been reported in the scientific literature.

Fragmentary fossils of Saurornitholestes have also been found from the eastern half of North America. A tooth found in the Mooreville Chalk of Alabama has been assigned to the genus. In 2015, Schwimmer et al. identified the existence of Saurornitholestes langstoni from the Tar Heel, Coachman, and Donoho Creek formations of North and South Carolina based on diagnostic teeth and a pedal ungual. This also makes S. langstoni currently the only dromaeosaurid taxon reported with certainty from the East Coast.

Saurornitholestes sullivani is known from the Hunter Wash fauna of the Kirtland Formation in New Mexico, based on the frontal SMP VP-1270. It differs from S. langstoni in the characters of the frontal.

A well-preserved skeleton of Saurornitholestes (specimen UALVP 55700) discovered in 2014 is currently under preparation by University of Alberta paleontologists working in Japan. After examining the skull of that specimen, Currie and Evans announced in 2019 that the Zapsalis teeth from the Dinosaur Park Formation represented the second premaxillary tooth of S. langstoni.

Additional information