Allosaurus - Ancient Animal

[Music] today an ortho - we are going to be talking about Allosaurus it lived 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic and it was a fearsome predator individuals could be up to 40 feet long and were equipped with deadly killing tools the name Allosaurus means different lizard alluding to its unique concave vertebrae before we talk about how awesome this animal was let's talk about its family first Allosaurus is part of the family Alice or today Alice or a day is a family of medium to large bipedal dinosaurs it is one of the four main families of karna Soria their Anatomy is typical of other neill theropod dinosaurs because of this it is quite hard to define the family's membership a typical house word specimen has about five teeth in the pre maxilla and sixteen teeth in the maxilla the dentary also has sixteen teeth Alice or teeth are serrated and continually replaced throughout their lives their skulls also bear crests that have carotene sheaths another aspect that characterizes these dinosaurs is their 28 coral vertebrae and an estimated 50 caudal vertebrae in all Allosaurus the pubis is highly elongated and extends ventrally to form a pubic foot which like in other large dinosaurs is thought to have been used to support the weight of the body in a crouching position I find this fact very interesting just imagine a predator as big as an Alice or crouching they also had relatively short four limbs and three digits on each hand one of these digits forms a semi opposable phone it seems the arms of this group have played a large role in their hunting strategy allosaurus itself evolved about a hundred and fifty five million years ago in the late jurassic it was a typical theropod predator massive skull short neck long tail and reduced four limbs the best known species Allosaurus fragilis was 8.5 meters or 28 feet in length the largest confirmed specimen was nine point seven or a thirty two feet long but some specimens have been up to 40 feet long weight estimates are debatable but it is thought to have been anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 kilograms or 2200 or 8800 pounds it is likely that the average Allosaurus fragilis would have been around 700 kilograms or 1,500 pounds that means an average specimen would only weigh as much as a large polar bear very interesting to put its size into perspective even a large Allosaurus would only weigh about as much as a hippopotamus how source was not a giant compared to other large theropods rather it was more of a medium-sized predator for its time several gigantic specimens have been found but they might belong to a different general the closely related genus or o-fag an axe reached lengths of over 10 meters or 40 feet it seems there's still a lot of discoveries to be made in regards to the allô sword famine though the skull was large it was proportionate to a theropod of its size its jaws were full of deadly serrated teeth they are about 4 inches long but this is pretty small for a theropod of this size also it did not have that many teeth it only had about 16 in its lower and upper jaw these teeth could easily tear through flesh just like sharks Allosaurus constantly grew in shed teeth since there are so many teeth being grown and falling out it is possible to buy Allosaurus teeth for reasonable prices something unique about this theropod was its weak bite force biochemical studies revealed that the bite force of an Allosaurus was less than lions or even leopards the calculations estimated a maximum bite force of about 2,100 Newtons while leopard exceeds it by about 200 Newtons although it had a weak bite force it was found that the upper jaw could withstand a force of up to 50,000 Newtons this is very interesting and may give us a hint about its lifestyle a popular theory is that it would use its skull like a hatchet to kill prey it was also found that it could open its jaw very wide with these two characteristics it could slam its head into large prey and drag its teeth through its flesh the skull was light and strong it could attack quickly against small prey and it was strong enough to handle the forces from attacking much larger prey the skull also had a pair of horns right above the eyes these horns were composed of extensions of the skull and were likely covered in a keratin covering they were probably used for a number of things like display possible combat and my favorite theory sunshades they're right above the eyes and would have blocked the Sun from entering the eye I find that very interesting if it was actually one of the uses of these horns the four limbs of Allosaurus were short and only about 35% the length of the hind limbs or rather large in comparison to other theropod species each arm was equipped with three strong and sharp claws they would have been used for gripping and possibly slashing prey the innermost finger or its thumb was the largest and most powerful it's foot claws were not anything special and likely were just for locomotion paleontologists except that Allosaurus was an active predator of large animals there is an abundance of evidence to show it's terrifying attacks there is a neck plate that belonged to Stegosaurus that had a u-shaped bite mark that was attributed to Allosaurus there is also evidence that it either preyed upon or scavenged sauropods it had relatively small teeth so it would have been very hard to take down a sauropod but it may have hunted them in packs we have no evidence to support that they hunted in packs so this is just pure speculation there is a correlation between weak bite forces and strong necks being used to take down large prey but this is mainly speculation in regards to Allosaurus if it did want to take down a sauropod it may have had gotten together with a few of its friends and hunted younger weak individuals like modern wolves chasing the prey and biting them until they die of exhaustion or bug boss I can just imagine an Allosaurus dragging his teeth across the back of a large animal sounds terrifying since the skull was relatively light it was able to make quick bites on ornithopods or strong attacks on Stegosaurus or sauropods another terrifying attack strategy it may have used has been referred to as flesh grazing this feeding method would have entailed taking bites at a large animals like sauropods no need to actually kill the prey rather just get a quick meal of meat this would allow it to feed itself without being at risk of injury from the animal its attacking it is not proven that they did this but imagine how brutal that would be ornithopods were likely the most common prey for Allosaurus they likely hunted them like big cats they would ambush them and grab them with their strong arms and subdue them they even may have bit the throat of these ornithopods and killed them that way just like modern cats this is perhaps one of the reasons some have made the comparison between Allosaurus and modern-day lions another interesting thing about Allosaurus is that it is estimated they could go up to about 25 years of age it is hard to calculate how old an animal can live from fossils but it has thought that it reached adulthood by the age of 15 and lived for another about 10 to 15 years after that like previously mentioned Allosaurus was able to support its body while sitting it may have used this behavior to sit on its eggs and keep them warm and defend them from predators while thinking about Allosaurus sitting on its eggs I asked myself how long would it have to guard its eggs before they hatched from what I have read it would take about 3 to 6 months for a dinosaur egg to hatch that is a mighty long time for something to go wrong I can imagine there are plenty of other animals in the Mesozoic that would make a living just by eating dino eggs unless they were guarded interesting to speculate about the behavior of animals this old now let's talk about the possibility of Allosaurus having feathers this will be quite short because we really don't know much we do have evidence of scales on the torso of Allosaurus but this doesn't rule out any feathers or fibers being on the animal it is likely that had some form of proto feathers on its bodies somewhere I think that's all I have to say about Allosaurus but I have other things to say first look at this comparison between the foot of a t-rex and the foot of an emu birds are dinosaurs so we shouldn't be too surprised but wow that is cool another big bird like an emu are cassowaries they have very similar feet - emus but they also have a very long claw on their feet this claw has given them the reputation of being the most dangerous bird in the world their inner toe claws can be 4 inches long and very sharp they can use this claw to stab and slice their victims they're not carnivores but they will use it to defend themselves a man in Florida of all places let's call him a Florida man was unfortunately killed by a cassowary last year cassowaries can grow to 5 feet tall and weigh up to a hundred and sixty pounds a hundred and sixty pounds that is terrifying apparently they can also jump seven feet into the air imagine one chasing you down and then jumping seven feet into the air just to come down and disembowel you cassowaries might be one of the scariest animals to me also i want to show you a picture of my most recent ceramics project this is a raptor of some kind with a nearly complete set of feathers this is a raptor of some kind with a nearly full covering of feathers i put a lot more detail into this than usual and hopefully it'll look great after i glaze it thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video leave a comment down below to let me know how you liked this outro thing I did I got off topic but maybe it was entertaining should I do this more often just add in some like more cool facts and maybe what I've been working on I don't know no just leave a comment down below I'll see you guys in the next episode of North o - see ya [Music] you

Channel: NORTH 02

Views: 5,382

Rating: 4.9139786 out of 5

Keywords: dinosaur, ancient animal, documentary, north 02, trey the explainer, paleo profile, animal, fossil, evolution, allo, allosaurus, saurophaganax, allosaurid, dino, trex, jurassic, Cretaceous

Id: QWZkWPdNRQI

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 08 2020