Creature Feature 6

Hello, everyone! For today's Creature Feature, I've decided to cover the dromaeosaur Acheroraptor temertyorum.

Unfortunately, not much is known in terms of actual remains of this species - the holotype specimen consists of a complete maxilla with a few maxillary teeth (as well as additional isolated teeth), and an additional dentary attributed to the species (Evans et al., 2013).

However, enough information was gleaned from these remains to investigate the phylogenetic position of the species - interestingly, this species falls within the subfamily Velociraptorinae, occupying a relatively basal position in the group. This is particularly interesting because aside from Acheroraptor, all Velociraptorinae species lived in Asia (Evans et al., 2013).

In the original description paper, Evans et al. predicted that Acheroraptor was the only species of dromaeosaur present in the Hell Creek formation, though this would later be disproven with the discovery of Dakotaraptor steini (DePalma et al., 2015). However, Acheroraptor was far smaller than its cousin, being a mid-sized Dromaeosaurid (Evans et al., 2013), whereas Dakotaraptor is second only to Utahraptor in size.

As I pointed out in the first Sci-Day post, phylogenetic trees are extremely important for Dinosaur Battlegrounds, and this species is a great example to illustrate that importance. Without any knowledge of its relations to other dinosaurs, it would be impossible to make any sort of accurate reconstruction based on the fragmentary remains known. Luckily, we do have a good idea of what its closest relatives were, and so we can use that information along with what material is known from the species to make a reliable estimate of what it may have looked like. Hopefully, more complete remains of this species will be found in the future, so that we may be able to have a clearer picture of its anatomy and physiology.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's Creature Feature! I apologize for its brevity, but unfortunately due to the relatively fragmentary remains of the species combined with the fact that it was only very recently described means that there is not much information to go on.

Acknowledgements:
Evans, D.C.; Larson, D.W.; Currie, P.J. 2013. A new dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) with Asian affinities from the latest Cretaceous of North America. Naturwissenschaften.
Depalma, Robert A.; Burnham, David A.; Martin, Larry D.; Larson, Peter L.; Bakker, Robert T. 2015. The First Giant Raptor (Theropoda: Dromaeosauridae) from the Hell Creek Formation. Paleontological Contributions (14).