Pyroraptor

Pyroraptor was a small dromaeosaurid dinosaur that inhabited island landscapes of southern France during the Late Cretaceous. The genus is known from relatively few bones, including pedal claws, toe bones, teeth, and vertebrae unearthed near Mount Olympus in Provence. Roughly the size of a modern wolf or large dog in length, it measured about one and a half metres long and had an estimated weight of around fifteen kilograms. Like other dromaeosaurs, Pyroraptor possessed an enlarged, curved killing claw on the second toe of each foot, which was held off the ground during walking. It was fully bipedal and almost certainly covered in complex feathers. Living alongside dwarf titanosaurian sauropods and rhabdodontid ornithopods, Pyroraptor probably hunted small vertebrates and scavenged larger prey, serving as a nimble predator in an insular European ecosystem.

Its fossils were discovered in Provence only after a destructive forest fire cleared away dense surface vegetation.

Where and when

Pyroraptor lived in the Late Cretaceous, from 72 to 70.6 million years ago (Campanian-Maastrichtian age). Its remains come from France, in the Argiles et Grès à Dinosaures.

The numbers

Length 1.6 m (estimates run from 1.4 to 1.8 m). Mass about 14 kg. Hip height about 0.6 m. That is 0.9 human-lengths, or 0.14 of a double-decker bus. These are estimates from fragmentary remains; fields marked estimated by the site are length, mass, first ma, last ma, hip height.

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