Happy Halloween

The “witching hour” is almost upon us, time to wish all our customers and readers a happy Halloween.  “All Hallows Eve” is a time traditionally linked with monsters and demons and the fossil record is crammed full of very scary looking invertebrates and vertebrate specimens that would have been very much at home in the cast of a horror movie.

Take for example, a demonic dinosaur…

In April 2011, a scientific paper was published announcing the formal scientific description of a demonic-looking dinosaur.  A fearsome, little meat-eater that would have terrorised New Mexico in the Late Triassic.  The dinosaur was named Daemonosaurus chauliodus and the name translates as “buck-toothed evil spirit”.

Although small compared to some of its later descendants, (D. chauliodus measured less than two metres long), it had a deep skull and oversized teeth in the front of its jaws which gave this little theropod a strong and nasty bite.

A Life Reconstruction of Daemonosaurus chauliodus

Daemonosaurus chauliodus life reconstruction.
The vicious-looking Late Triassic theropod dinosaur Daemonosaurus chauliodus from New Mexico.

Picture credit: Jeffrey Martz

Happy Halloween!

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