Allosaurus Anax

I don’t know why but I am amused by the established fact that Allosaurus specimens have a marked tendency to display paleopathologies that indicate that even among Theropods, they were willing to take risks. We find broken ribs, punctured tail vertebra, and a variety of wounds from Stegosaurus thagomizers. Including a thagomizer blow to the public bone of a particularly… let’s just say reckless… Allosaurus.

I like to imagine Allosaurus as a genus of Johnny Knoxvilles. Daring each other to attack a Brontosaurus or a Stegosaurus and getting their faces smashed so hard they spend the rest of their lives with crooked jaws, bone spurs, stubbed tails and yes, spike punctures to their pubic bones. The Tazmanian Devils of the Jurassic.

Saurophaganax maximus was thought to be a very large predatory theropod that lived in the famous Morrison Formation of Jurassic North America. Several of the bones assigned to this genus were very similar to, but significantly larger than, those of Allosaurus specimens which had already been found in the Morrison, while others were unusual for those of a theropod at all, especially some of the vertebrae.