Researchers Uncover Fossil of Giant Raptor in Northwestern South Dakota

There are other mysteries surrounding this new raptor, such as whether they were lone beasts or prone to wandering in packs.

This is the Dakotaraptor, one of the biggest and likely the freakiest-looking predators to roam the Midwest 66 million years ago.

Fossilized winged giant raptor found in South Dakota represents a major discovery bridging an evolutionary gap of the Cretaceous Laramidia Landscape.

According to a news release from the university, the raptor hails from the Cretaceous period and would have been lightly built and probably as agile as the vicious Velociraptor.

Lead researcher and author Robert DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in West Palm Beach, Fla., led the expedition to South Dakota. The tell-tale sign of it having been feathered was so-called “quill knobs”, on the bone where the animal’s feathers were attached.

The research is published in the journal Paleontological Contributions.

According to the team, Dakotaraptor steini would have been occasionally in direct competition with smaller tyrannosaurid dinosaurs such as young Tyrannosaurus rex or Nanotyrannus lancensis, which, at an adult length of 20 – 30 feet (6 – 9 m), were not much larger than the new species.

The researchers say that it is unlikely that the raptor could fly with its size, but perhaps it used the feathers to keep its eggs warm. If so, there might have been multiple periods of time leading up to present-day birds in which their ancestors possessed feathers but were flightless, like in the case of today’s emus, cassowarys, penguins, and ostrichs.

A research team led by a University of Kansas alumnus has identified a new giant raptor, the largest specimen ever found with wing feathers.

“This new predatory dinosaur fills the body size gap between smaller theropods and large tyrannosaurs that lived at this time”, said Kansas University paleontologist David Burnham, who co-authored the paper outlining and revealing the find late last week.

Like the famed Velociraptor, the Dakotaraptor specimen appeared to have once had feathers on its forearms.

But, they write, “The size and proportions of Dakotaraptor nearly certainly preclude its potential for flight”.