With the passing of the one-year anniversary, I’m going to
return to my peak output. I’ve been
distracted, but now I’m back. So today,
we’re going to feature another dinosaur.
This one’s a fairly recent one, but part of an interesting story in both
its history as an animal and its history in paleontology.
Everyone loves the big scary dinosaurs. When William
Buckland was given a big jaw with a serrated, curved tooth from Stonesfield
quarry in 1815, he was fascinated by it,
and thanks to the ferocious reconstruction by Benjamin Hawkins it became an
icon of antiquity. Cope’s Dryptosaurus in 1866 and Marsh’s Allosaurus 1877
brought dragons back to life. The apex came with the legendary Tyrannosaurus of
1905. People like their animals big,
scary, and extinct, and Tyrannosaurus is the epitome of all this.
So I’m not going to talk about Tyrannosaurus, but a
contemporary. This one’s been only described fairly recently, but its story is
intertwined with mysterious bones found in 1932. This is the story of
Rajasaurus, but it’s also a story of the Lameta Formation near the Narmada River
next to Jabalpur
in Madya Pradesh.
