The furculae of the dromaeosaurid dinosaur Dakotaraptor steini are trionychid turtle entoplastra

, , , ,
1 Paleontology Research Lab, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
2 Department of Biological Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
3 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
4 Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
5 Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1570v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Paleontology, Taxonomy
Keywords
Trionychidae, Dromaeosauridae, Theropoda, Testudines, Axestemys, Cretaceous, Maastrichtian, Hell Creek Formation, South Dakota
Copyright
© 2015 Arbour et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Arbour VM, Zanno LE, Larson DW, Evans DC, Sues H. 2015. The furculae of the dromaeosaurid dinosaur Dakotaraptor steini are trionychid turtle entoplastra. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1570v1

Abstract

Dakotaraptor steini is a recently described dromaeosaurid dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Hell Creek Formation of South Dakota. Included within the D. steini hypodigm are three elements originally identified as furculae: one which is part of the holotype specimen and two referred specimens. We show that the elements described as D. steini ‘furculae’ are not theropod dinosaur furculae, but rather trionychid turtle entoplastra. Given that the holotype 'furcula' is not referable to Dromaeosauridae and that the specimen is a disarticulated individual based on skeletal remains from a multitaxic bonebed, the holotype of Dakotaraptor steini is a chimera.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.