Pronunciation: PAN-goo-RAP-tuh
Meaning: Pangu plunderer
Author/s: You et al. (2014)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: Yunnan Province, China
Discovery Chart Position: #883
Panguraptor lufengensis
Panguraptor is the most basal theropod dinosaur currently known from China and the best-preserved coelophysoid theropod dinosaur from the whole of Asia. But its announcement was such a low key affair that an event of Haley's Comet-like proportions occurred: a website that wasn't Wikipedia (this one) actually made it to the number one slot on the first page of Google!
Perhaps if Asian coelophysoids were more popular, or if the only other official one (Sinosaurus, from the same formation, no less) was based on more than a few limb fragments the fanfare would have been louder and this short-lived blip could have been avoided. But by the by, we were impressed that Panguraptor reduced the Lufeng vegetarian/carnivore ratio to a more respectable 5-1. But what struck us as odd is that authors You et al. claim it's more closely related to Coelophysis than it is to "Syntarsus", even though "Syntarsus" was renamed Megapnosaurus in 2001 and most palaeontologists reckon it's synonymous with Coelophysis.
(Pangu plunderer from the Lufeng Formation)Etymology
Panguraptor is derived from "Pangu" (the Chinese creator god) and the Latin "raptor" (plunderer, robber or thief). The story goes: Pangu cracked the giant egg in which he had been sleeping for thousands of years and the whole world sprang forth, just as the super-continent Pangea "cracked" and created the world's continents as we know them today.
The species epithet, lufengensis, is derived from "Lufeng" (for the Lufeng Formation) and the Latin "ensis" (from).
Discovery
The remains of Panguraptor were discovered in the Shawan Member of the Lufeng Formation (Shawan Group), Lufeng County, Yunnan Province, China, on the 12th of October, 2007.
The holotype (LFGT-0103) is a well-preserved skeleton, including the skull and lower jaw, the chunk of vertebral column from between the head and hip, a right shoulder blade, a partial right forelimb, part of the pelvic girdle, a partial left leg and an almost complete right leg.
