First Step Backwards

©Nobu Tamura

As promised a week or two ago, I plan to go back over the oldest list of dinosaurs I covered prior to the inception the blog/Facebook page devoted directly to this pursuit of knowledge and education. The first dinosaur that I covered in that respect was a well known and loved dinosaur: Deinonychus antirrhopus. As the face of Jurassic Park (yes, the raptors are based on Deinonychus, though Michael Crichton referred to them as Velociraptor antirrhopus, a synonym used during the late 1980's by Gregory S. Paul most notably in 1988's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World) and the usual image conjured up by the word "raptor" these days, Deinonychus is a much revered dinosaur and the subject of many fables or half truths as well. Officially named and described by Ostrom in 1969, Deinonychus remains are actually known from long before that, though they were falsely attributed to a larger theropod with a different tentative name (Daptosaurus agilis) by Barnum Brown in 1931 while working on Tenontosaurus. Thankfully the very fragmented remains were not described by Brown and the name did not stick; Ostrom instead decided upon Deinonychus, meaning Terrible Claw (antirrhopus means "counterbalanced" and references the stiffened tail). Since the 1960's many other remains have been recovered including, in 2000, what is thought to be a Deinonychus egg, though the results of the dig and identity of the material are, at the moment, unknown to myself (I will look into this of course). This should be a fun dinosaur to cover that I have hitherto not covered with a wider audience, so I hope this is a good kickoff to my retro list!