Pronunciation: cap-it-al-SOR-us
Meaning: Capital Lizard
Author/s: Kranz (1990)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Washington, USA
Discovery Chart Position: #347
Capitalsaurus potens
"Capitalsaurus" was unearthed by workmen during a sewer pipe installation in Washington, D.C. (hence the name), and is known only from a partial, poorly preserved, slightly-taller-than-it-is-wide vertebra that is seemingly incomparable to theropod fossils from any other time or place, but not in a good way. Nevertheless, it's had an eventful journey.
Project manager James K. Murphy delivered said vertebra to the Smithsonian on January 28th, 1898. Ten years later, it was shipped off to Yale, where Richard Swann Lull—commissioned by the Maryland Geological Survey to write a manuscript on the region’s dinosaur bones—assigned it to Creosaurus as a new species, Creosaurus potens, in 1911. Another decade passed before Gilmore, with some hesitation, reassigned it to Dryptosaurus? potens, suspecting that Creosaurus was a synonym of Antrodemus (itself later subsumed into Allosaurus), and there were no other large, well-represented theropods known from Eastern North America at that time. But it seemed out of place there too, so Peter Kranz tagged the fossil "Capitalsaurus" in 1990.
"Capitalsaurus" has never been officially described, or even officially named, and because of the eye-rolling that the mere mention of its name generates in palaeo-land, it probably never will be. Still, the residents of America's capital city were cock-a-hoop. They adopted "Capitalsaurus" as their official state dinosaur in 1998, on the centenary of its discovery, and the Mayor declared January 28th, 2001, "Capitalsaurus Day". Unfortunately, the resolution was passed on February 6th—nine days after the event—but we'll bet it would have been a great party.
Check out the other USA state dinosaurs here.
Project manager James K. Murphy delivered said vertebra to the Smithsonian on January 28th, 1898. Ten years later, it was shipped off to Yale, where Richard Swann Lull—commissioned by the Maryland Geological Survey to write a manuscript on the region’s dinosaur bones—assigned it to Creosaurus as a new species, Creosaurus potens, in 1911. Another decade passed before Gilmore, with some hesitation, reassigned it to Dryptosaurus? potens, suspecting that Creosaurus was a synonym of Antrodemus (itself later subsumed into Allosaurus), and there were no other large, well-represented theropods known from Eastern North America at that time. But it seemed out of place there too, so Peter Kranz tagged the fossil "Capitalsaurus" in 1990.
"Capitalsaurus" has never been officially described, or even officially named, and because of the eye-rolling that the mere mention of its name generates in palaeo-land, it probably never will be. Still, the residents of America's capital city were cock-a-hoop. They adopted "Capitalsaurus" as their official state dinosaur in 1998, on the centenary of its discovery, and the Mayor declared January 28th, 2001, "Capitalsaurus Day". Unfortunately, the resolution was passed on February 6th—nine days after the event—but we'll bet it would have been a great party.
Check out the other USA state dinosaurs here.
Etymology
"Capitalsautus" is derived from "Capital" (because it was discovered in America's capital city of Washington, D.C.), and the Greek "sauros" (lizard).
The species epithet, potens, means "powerful" in Latin.
Almost all palaeontologists dismiss the name out of hand because its remains are too lousy to be anchoring a genus. That may be true, but some other dinosaurs have been based on less.
Discovery
The only remains of "Capitalsaurus" were discovered in the Arundel Formation during sewer work at the corner of
First Street and F Street Southeast (named "Capitalsaurus Court" on January 28th, 2000), Washington, D.C., (formally, the District of Columbia) in January, 1898.
The holotype (USNM 3049) is a partial vertebra, probably from the tail.
