A team of scientists detailed one of the largest raptors known to have ever existed, and noted how its size set it apart from related dinosaurs.
Published in the journal Paleontological Contributions, the new study details the a 66 million year old Dakotaraptor steini fossil, a raptor that likely grew up to 16 feet long. Though not particularly large enough to threaten some of the largest predators of its time, Dakotaraptor would have been imposing compared to the smaller Velociraptor.
"This new predatory dinosaur also fills the body size gap between smaller theropods and large tyrannosaurs that lived at this time," study co-author David Burnham, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, said in a press release.
Raptors and their methods of attack are mostly associated with agility and speed, as opposed to a larger carnivore that would be able to overpower its prey, Discover Magazine reported. Dakotaraptor and its older, larger cousin Utahraptor may have fallen somewhere in between.
"This Cretaceous period raptor would have been lightly built and probably just as agile as the vicious smaller theropods, such as the Velociraptor," study lead author Robert DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, said in the release.
What is not know about Dakotaraptor at this time is whether or not they hunted in packs.
"I think there is at least moderate evidence that some dromaeosaurids were pack hunters," Steve Brusatte, a dinosaur researcher at the University of Edinburgh not associated with the study, told Discovery, "but it's not a slam dunk that all of them were, or that they normally hunted this way."
