America lived during the late Cretaceous (70 million years ago) period.
Austroraptor was a genus of dromaeosaurid dinosaur.
It is about 16 feet long and 500 pounds, large s
ize, narrow snout with short arms.
As with all types of dinosaurs, paleontologists are unearthing new raptors all the time.
One of the latest to join the flock is Austroraptor, which was "diagnosed" in 2008 based on a skeleton dug up in Argentina (hence the "austro," meaning "south," in its name).
To date, Austroraptor is the largest raptor yet discovered in South America, measuring a full 16 feet from head to tail and probably weighing in the neighborhood of 500 pounds--proportions that would have given its North American cousin, Deinonychus, a run for its money, but would have made it no match for the nearly one-ton Utah-raptor that lived tens of millions of years earlier.
The fossil specimen was discovered in the Late Cretaceous deposits located in the Río Negro Province of Argentina.
The species was named in honor of Alberto Cabaza, who founded the Museo Municipal de Lamarque where the specimen was partially studied.
A cladistic analysis of the specimen's anatomical features by the describers placed Austroraptor within the subfamily Unenlagiinae of the Dromaeosauridae.
Some of these characteristics include the geometry and formation of the specimen's vertebral elements.
It was determined that Austroraptor was a close relative of the unenlagiine dromaeosaur Buitreraptor.
The dinosaur would have been slender and carnivorous.
It has a strangely elongated skull, and suggests that raptors in the southern hemisphere were both thriving and diversifying even as that family of dinosaurs was declining in the northern hemisphere.
Dinosaurs flourished during this period, but unless and until more Austroraptor fossils are discovered, it will be difficult to say much more about how this new species fit into the environment of its time.
At that time in natural history, the Patagonian region consisted of plains and rivers populated by duck-billed herbivores, which might have been Austroraptor food supply.
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