Afrovenator

Taxobox|
name = "Afrovenator"
| fossil_range = Early Cretaceous

---

regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Sauropsida
superordo = Dinosauria
ordo = Saurischia
subordo = Theropoda
familia = Megalosauridae
genus = "Afrovenator"
species = "A. abakensis"
binomial = "Afrovenator abakensis"
binomial_authority = Sereno et al., 1994

"Afrovenator" (pronEng|ˌæfroʊvɨˈneɪtɚ) ("African hunter") is a genus of megalosaurid theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Period of northern Africa. It was a bipedal predator, with a mouthful of sharp teeth and three claws on each hand. Judging from the one skeleton known, this dinosaur was approximately 30 feet (9 meters) long from snout to tail tip.

The generic name comes from the Latin prefix "afro-" ("from Africa") "venator" ("hunter"). There is one named species, "A. abakensis". The name refers to its predatory nature, and its location in Africa, specifically from In Abaka, the Tuareg name for the region of Niger where the fossils were found. The original description of both genus and species is found in a 1994 paper which appeared in the prestigious journal Science. The primary author was well-known American paleontologist Paul Sereno, with Jeffrey Wilson, Hans Larsson, Didier Dutheil, and Hans-Dieter Sues as coauthors.

The remains of "Afrovenator" were discovered in the Tiourarén Formation of the department of Agadez in Niger. The Tiourarén most likely represents the Hauterivian to Barremian stages of the Early Cretaceous Period, or approximately 136 to 125 million years ago (Sereno et al. 1994). The sauropod "Jobaria", whose remains were first mentioned in the same paper which named "Afrovenator", is also known from this formation.

"Afrovenator" is known from a single nearly complete skeleton, featuring most of the skull (minus the mandible, or lower jaw), parts of the spinal column, hands, and forelimbs, a nearly complete pelvis, and complete hind limbs. This skeleton is housed at the University of Chicago.

Taxonomy

Most modern analyses place "Afrovenator" within Megalosauridae, which was formerly a "wastebasket family" which contained many large and hard-to-classify theropods, but has since been redefined in a meaningful way, as a sister taxon to the family Spinosauridae within the Spinosauroidea.

A 2002 analysis, focused mainly on the noasaurids, found "Afrovenator" to be a basal megalosaurid. However, it did not include "Dubreuillosaurus" (formerly "Poekilopleuron valesdunesis"), which could affect the results in that region of the cladogram (Carrano et al. 2002).

Other recent, more complete, cladistic analyses show "Afrovenator" in a subfamily of Megalosauridae with "Eustreptospondylus" and "Dubreuillosaurus". This subfamily is either called Megalosaurinae (Allain 2002) or Eustreptospondylinae (Holtz et al. 2004). The latter study also includes "Piatnitzkysaurus" in this subfamily.

A few alternative hypotheses have been presented for "Afrovenator"'s relationships.

In Sereno's original description, "Afrovenator" was found to be a basal spinosauroid (he uses the name "Torvosauroidea"), outside of Spinosauridae and Megalosauridae (which he calls "Torvosauridae") (Sereno et al. 1994).

Finally, another recent study places "Afrovenator" outside of Spinosauroidea completely, and instead finds it more closely related to "Allosaurus" (Rauhut 2003). This is the only study to draw this conclusion.

References

*Allain, R. 2002. Discovery of megalosaur (Dinosauria, Theropoda) in the middle Bathonian of Normandy (France) and its implications for the phylogeny of basal Tetanurae. "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" 22(3): 548-563.
*Carrano, M.T., Sampson, S.D. & Forster, C.F. 2002. The osteology of "Masiakasaurus knopfleri", a small abelisauroid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" 22(3): 510-534.
*Holtz, T.R., Molnar, R.E., Currie, P.J. 2004. Basal Tetanurae. In: Weishampel, D.B., Dodson, P., & Osmolska, H. (Eds.). "The Dinosauria" (2nd Edition). Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 71-110.
*Rauhut, O.W.M. (2003). "The Interrelationships and Evolution of Basal Theropod Dinosaurs. Special Papers in Palaeontology 69". London: The Palaeontological Association. Pp. 1-215.
*Sereno, P.C., Wilson, J.A., Larsson, H.C.E., Dutheil, D.B., & Sues, H-D. 1994. Early Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Sahara. "Science" 266: 267-270.