STL Science Center

STL Science Center

02 October 2012

Paper Housing at the University of Michigan

The paper naming Rajasaurus has Jeffrey Wilson as its lead author followed by Paul Sereno, Suresh Srivastava, Devendra K. Bhatt, Ashu Khosla, and Ashok Sahni. Obviously the last four authors are paleontologists of Indian descent; which makes a lot of sense given that the dinosaur in question was plucked from the heart of India. Because Jeffrey Wilson is located at the University of Michigan the paper has been placed online by the Museum of Paleontology at UM. Published in 2003, making Rajasaurus a relatively new dinosaur to science, the paper describes the skeletal elements found and offers details into the how and why these authors identified Rajasaurus as a new species as well as why it was fitted into the Abelisaurid family. The paper is actually quite exhaustive and, through the use of quite a lot of figures, plates, and tables of the data collected from Rajasaurus, describes the close relationship of Rajasaurus with Majungasaurus and Carnotaurus as well as summarizing the state of fossil hunting in India at the time of publishing. The sheer amount of data in the paper is fantastic and it really is quite an in depth look at this new animal.

No comments:

Post a Comment