Sailing Away

©Alvaro Rozalen

The number of dinosaurs covered here continues to grow and the number of dinosaurs that have yet to be covered continues to become increasingly perplexing. For the most part this is because a lot of named species have very little referential material and documentation, making them poor subjects for a week long investigation. That simply means that forays into non-dinosaur animals may become more frequent as time goes on. This week, though, I found another overlooked but fantastically interesting dinosaur described in 2010 by Ortega, Escaso, and Sanz: Concavenator corcovatus. This medium-sized carcharodontosaur possessed a small hump or sail on its back that, as many sails and humps are thought to, have had thermoregulatory properties or abilities. This animal is even more special in that the forearm of the fossil has well preserved quill knobs, the attachments on the bone for feathers. This makes this dinosaur a feathered dinosaur with rather good evidence to support that claim.