Since my recent visit to the Dinosaur World in Glen Rose, Texas, I'm starting a series of dinosaur entries on this site to post on here from time to time. Sometimes, I'll be able to post photos from the park in creating these posts. So let's get started.
The Eoraptor was a thin-bodied carnivore that stood only about 3 feet(1 meter) in height after full growth. The Eoraptor Lunensis is Greek for dawn hunter. It is widely recognized as the primitive dinosaur during the Triassic time period which was anywhere between 225 to 250 million years ago.
The Eoraptor has a mix of fossils which makes it difficult to place the dinosaur into a specific group. For this reason, many scientists theorize this as the first primitive dinosaur because of the different features it had. Some scientists have placed them as saurischians which are in the same group as the Tyrannosaurus Rex because of having a similar hip structure.
The weight of the Eoraptor was about 20-25 pounds(roughly 10 kilograms). It ran upright on its hind legs and the arms were half the size of the legs. They had five-fingered hands, though two were so tiny that they were of no use for hunting. The three fingers had claws used for hunting small prey which are the same characteristics of theropods.
The teeth of the Eoraptor had characteristics of carnivore and herbivore dinosaurs because of its curved, saw-edged features. However, only some of the teeth had that feature which made it difficult to hunt larger prey. The jaw didn't have a sliding joint which made it impossible to hold larger prey, too. These features were not of a true predatory dinosaur.
The origin of the dinosaur lived in what is now the northern portion of Argentina in the Ischigualasto Basin. However, the area was a river basin during the Triassic time period, and is now mostly desert. It was discovered in 1991 by University of San Juan paleontologist Ricardo Martinez. A team, led by Paul Sereno, investigated after discovery and came up with the name of Eoraptor in 1993.
Sources: Paul Sereno's Paleontologist site and Handy Dinosaur Answer book
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