Re: Huge predator from India

[John Schneiderman <dino@revelation.unomaha.edu>]

This is all the information I have on the huge predator from India.
Special thanks to George Olshevsky for the informative article found in 
the Winter 1994 issue of The Dinosaur Report: a quarterly publication of 
the Dinosaur Society.

Bruhathkayosaurus
   order: Theropoda
     suborder: Carnosauria?
       family: incertae sedis

Describers: P.Yadagiri & K.Ayyasami  1989

meaning: Bruhathkaya (Sanskrit word for "huge body") and sauros = lizard

Type species: Bruhathkayosaurus matleyi
provisionally considered a valid genus

size: 60-65 ft.
weight: 12-15 tons

late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian stage)  65-74 mya
India, Tiruchirapalli dist., Tamil Nadu, northeast of Kallamedu village
(Kallamedu Fm.)

Type specimen: GSI PAL/SR/20
                  an ilium about 1.2 m long (about the same size if not 
                  smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex)

other material: partial femur, tibia (2 meters long), an ischium, 
                a radius, and a platycoelous caudal centrum

Some of the material is very poor at best.  The tibia may even belong to 
a sauropod or may be a petrified log.  If the material is found to be 
valid than we have a gigantic predatory dinosaur unlike any theropod know 
and well deserving its own family.  The hips are about the same size or a 
little smaller than  Tyrannosaurus rex, but the femur is very large and 
massive.  Meaning that the predator was not a swift runner.

Source references:

Yadagiri,P. & Ayyasami,K., 1989, "A carnosaurian dinosaur from the 
Kallamedu Formation (Maastrichtian horizon), Tamilnadu" in Sastry, 
M.V.A., et al., eds., Symposium on Three Decades of Development in 
Palaeontolgy and Stratigraphy in India: Geological Survey of India 
Special Publications 11(1): 523-528.




I hope this answers your question...
John Schneiderman ( dino@revelation.unomaha.edu )