Perhaps they wished to avoid any misconceptions that the name meant "murid thief," which would be my first guess for anything named "Muriraptor."
Sent from Outlook
I wasn’t a reviewer on this (although I was interviewed about it last week), and so I wasn’t able to catch the name issue.
But shouldn’t it more properly be Muriraptor? You aren’t supposed to use the full nominative singular in a compound word like this.
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
Principal Lecturer, Vertebrate PaleontologyOffice: Geology 4106, 8000 Regents Dr., College Park MD 20742
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/Phone: 301-405-6965
Fax: 301-314-9661
Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park ScholarsOffice: Centreville 1216, 4243 Valley Dr., College Park MD 20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843
Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Department of Geology
Building 237, Room 11178000 Regents Drive
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-4211 USA
From: dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu [mailto:dinosaur-l-request@usc.edu] On Behalf Of Ben Creisler
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 2:11 PM
To: dinosaur-l@usc.edu
Subject: [dinosaur] Murusraptor, New Megaraptoran Theropod from Late Cretaceous of Argentina (free pdf)
Ben Creisler
New in PLoS ONE:
Rodolfo A. Coria & Philip J. Currie (2016)
A New Megaraptoran Dinosaur (Dinosauria, Theropoda, Megaraptoridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia.
PLoS ONE 11(7): e0157973.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0157973
A skeleton discovered in the Upper Cretaceous Sierra Barrosa Formation (Turonian-Coniacian) of Neuquén Province, Argentina represents a new species of theropod dinosaur related to the long snouted, highly pneumatized Megaraptoridae. The holotype specimen of Murusraptor barrosaensis n.gen et n.sp. (MCF-PVPH-411) includes much of the skull, axial skeleton, pelvis and tibia. Murusraptor is unique in having several diagnostic features that include anterodorsal process of lacrimal longer than height of preorbital process, and a thick, shelf-like thickening on the lateral surface of surangular ventral to the groove between the anterior surangular foramen and the insert for the uppermost intramandibular process of the dentary. Other characteristic features of Murusraptor barrosaensis n.gen. et n. sp.include a large mandibular fenestra, distal ends of caudal neural spines laterally thickened into lateral knob-like processes, short ischia distally flattened and slightly expanded dorsoventrally. Murusraptor belongs to a Patagonian radiation of megaraptorids together with Aerosteon, Megaraptor and Orkoraptor. In spite being immature, it is a larger but more gracile animal than existing specimens of Megaraptor, and is comparable in size with Aerosteon and Orkoraptor. The controversial phylogeny of the Megaraptoridae as members of the Allosauroidea or a clade of Coelurosauria is considered analyzing two alternative data sets.
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