Pronunciation: IRR-uh-TAY-tor
Meaning: The irritating one
Author/s: Martill et al. (1996)
Synonyms: Angaturama limai?
First Discovery: Ceará State, Brazil
Discovery Chart Position: #414
Irritator challengeri
Contrary to what Early Cretaceous river-dwelling critters of Brazil would probably opine, if they were still with us today, Irritator—an Araripe Basin spinosaurid with a long crocodile-like snout and a likewise fondness for fish—was no more irritating than any other theropod dinosaur during its life. The irritation began some 100 million years after its death.
Dave Martill coined the name after realising a commercial fossil dealer had "fixed" the broken snout of the only existing skull with car body filler! Bigger and better fossils command higher prices, even those illegally smuggled from Brazil under the cover of darkness. But separating the tat from actual bone was really irritating: ask Diane Scott, who was charged with the task on this particular occasion.
Irritator was placed in the Spinosaurus-anchored spinosaurid family of theropod dinosaurs based on its similarly long and possibly crested skull with un-serrated cone-shaped teeth. But whether it had a Spinosaurus-like back sail is a mystery because neither a back nor a sail have yet been discovered. Strangely, Angaturama limai, another spinosaurid from the same time and place, seems to be in possession of some snout bones that are missing from the skull of Irritator and are a match both in shape and size. It appears likely that the earlier named Irritator and Angaturama are not only the same species but also the same individual.
Dave Martill coined the name after realising a commercial fossil dealer had "fixed" the broken snout of the only existing skull with car body filler! Bigger and better fossils command higher prices, even those illegally smuggled from Brazil under the cover of darkness. But separating the tat from actual bone was really irritating: ask Diane Scott, who was charged with the task on this particular occasion.
Irritator was placed in the Spinosaurus-anchored spinosaurid family of theropod dinosaurs based on its similarly long and possibly crested skull with un-serrated cone-shaped teeth. But whether it had a Spinosaurus-like back sail is a mystery because neither a back nor a sail have yet been discovered. Strangely, Angaturama limai, another spinosaurid from the same time and place, seems to be in possession of some snout bones that are missing from the skull of Irritator and are a match both in shape and size. It appears likely that the earlier named Irritator and Angaturama are not only the same species but also the same individual.
(Challenger's irritating one)Etymology
Irritator was so named by Dave Martill who felt *expletives deleted* "irritated" that its skull had been artificially enhanced. The species epithet, challengeri, honors Professor Challenger from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World. The fact that its preparation was so challenging is completely coincidental. Or maybe not.
Discovery
The remains of Irritator were discovered near Buxexé Village in the Romualdo Formation of the Santana group, Araripe Basin, 5 km from Santana do Cariri, southern Ceará State, Brazil.
The holotype (SMNS 58022, housed at the Stuttgart State Museum of the Natural Sciences) is an incomplete skull. In its unprepared state, it was originally identified as the skull of a large
pterosaur. Martill realised it was a dinosaur when he named and described it in 1996 after copious amounts of clean-up work, but he assigned it to Maniraptora. In 1996, Kellner found no evidence in support of maniraptoran affinities and referred Irritator to Spinosauridae.
Preparator
Diane M. Scott of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.
