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Cryolophosaurus

Name: “cold crest lizard”

Length: 6-8 m

Height: 2 m

Weight: 2 tons

Diet: carnivore

Time: Jurassic (190 MYA)

Location: Antarctica

Dinosaur stuff

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Cryolophosaurus (pronounced Cry-o-Lof-o-Saw-rus, meaning “cold crest lizard”) was a large theropod dinosaur, with a bizarre crest on its head that looked like a Spanish comb. Due to the resemblance of this feature to Elvis Presley’s pompadour haircut from the 1950s, this dinosaur was at one point informally known as “Elvisaurus”.

Cryolophosaurus was excavated from Antarctica’s Early Jurassic Hanson Formation (former the upper Falla Formation) by paleontologist Dr. William Hammer in 1991. It is the first carnivorous dinosaur to be discovered in Antarctica and the first dinosaur of any kind from the continent to be officially named. Dating from the Early Jurassic Period, it was originally described as the earliest known tetanuran, though subsequent studies have found that it is probably more closely related to the dilophosaurs.

Cryolophosaurus is the first meat-eating dinosaur to be discovered on the frozen continent of Antarctica. It was an odd looking dinosaur, fairly large for such an early hunter. It had a very unusual crest, sort of a single horn without a point. It is an important discovery not only because of where it was found, but also because it shows features found on both early, less advance meat-eaters and later more advanced meat-eaters such as Allosaurus. When this dinosaur was roaming around on Antarctica, that island continent was a part of Pangaea and attached to Africa, South America and Australia in a much warmer part of the world.

It is possible that Cryolophosaurus will be assigned to the ceratosaur family once further study is concluded. Little is known of this dinosaur due in part to the inhospitable environment where its remains were discovered. It is likely an important piece of the puzzle for theropod evolution, bridging both primitive and more advanced features.

Description

Cryolophosaurus was about 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) long, which is significantly smaller than the largest Allosaurus, which reached up to 12 meters (40 feet) in length.

A high, narrow skull was discovered, 65 centimeters (25 inches) long. The peculiar nasal crest runs just over the eyes, where it rises up perpendicular to the skull and fans out. It is furrowed, giving it a comb-like appearance. It is an extension of the skull bones, near the tear ducts, fused on either side to horns which rise from the eye sockets (orbital horns). While other theropods like the Monolophosaurus have crests, they usually run along the skull instead of across it.

Classification

“Cryolophosaurus is also of significance because it represents the oldest known tetanuran from any continent” it is the only one from the Early Jurassic.”

William R. Hammer

Classification is difficult because the Cryolophosaurus has a mix of primitive and advanced characteristics. The leg bone (femur) has traits of early theropods, while the skull resembles much later species of the clade Tetanurae, like China’s Sinraptor and Yangchuanosaurus. Originally, Hammer and colleagues suspected that Cryolophosaurus might be a ceratosaur or even an early abelisaur, with some traits convergent with those of more advanced tetanurans, but ultimately concluded that it was itself the earliest known member of the tetanuran group. While a subsequent study by Hammer (along with Smith and Currie) again recovered Cryolophosaurus as a tetanuran, a later (2007) study by the same authors found that it was more closely related to Dilophosaurus and Dracovenator than to tetanurans.

Discovery

Cryolophosaurus was originally collected during the 1990-91 austral summer, by William R. Hammer and his team, on Mount Kirkpatrick, in the Beardmore Glacier region of the Transantarctic Mountains. They were located in the siliceous siltstone of the Hanson Formation (formerly the upper Falla Formation) and dated to the Pliensbachian stage of the early Jurassic.

In 1991, both Hammer and the Ohio geologist David Elliot had excavated separate outcroppings near Beardmore Glacier, sharing logistical expenses. Elliot’s team first came across the remains of Cryolophosaurus in a rock formation (altitude 13,000 feet (4,000 m) and 400 miles (640 km) from the South Pole), and notified Hammer. Over the next three weeks, Hammer excavated 5,000 pounds (2300 kg) of fossil-bearing rock. The team recovered over 100 fossil bones, including those of Cryolophosaurus

The remains included part of a partially-crushed skull, a jaw bone (mandible), parts of the backbone (30 vertebrae), hip bones (the ilium, ischium, and pubis), leg bones (femur and fibula), an ankle bone (tibiotarsus) and foot bones (metatarsals). These specimens were formally named and described in 1994 by Hammer and William J. Hickerson, in the journal Science. The name Cryolophosaurus ellioti was dervived from the Greek cryo‚ (meaning ‘cold’ or ‘frozen’), lopho‚ (meaning ‘crest’) and sauros‚ (meaning ‘lizard’). Hammer and Hickerson named the species C. ellioti after David Elliot, who had made the initial discovery of the fossils.

During the 2003 season, a field team returned and collected more material from the original site. In addition, a second locality was discovered about 30 meters higher in the section on Mt. Kirkpatrick.

Paleoecology

The remains of the Cryolophosaurus were found in the Hanson Formation with the remains of a very large prosauropod (related to plateosaurids like the Plateosaurus and Lufengosaurus), a small pterosaur, a mammal-like reptile (a tritylodont, which is a type of synapsid about the size of a rat), and another unknown theropod. There were also fossilized tree trunks two meters away. The site is about 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) above sea level.

This supports the idea that, even at high altitudes, early Jurassic Antarctica had forests populated by a diverse range of species, at least along the coast, even though Antarctica was closer to the equator and the world was considerably warmer than today, the climate was still cool temperate. Recent models of Jurassic air flow indicate that coastal areas probably never dropped much below freezing, although more extreme conditions existed inland. Cryolophosaurus was found about 650 kilometers (400 miles) from the South Pole but, at the time it lived, this was about 1000km or so farther north.

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sauropsida

Superorder: Dinosauria

Order: Saurischia

Suborder: Theropoda

(unranked): Tetanurae or Dilophosauridae

Genus: Cryolophosaurus

Species: C. ellioti Hammer & Hickerson, 1994