Saurophaganax - Lord of the Lizard-Eaters

150 million years ago a giant predator stalked the lands of ancient Oklahoma this predator was a dinosaur a large bodied theropod that has triggered a great deal of uncertainty as to what it actually is the history of research into this animal has been quite a mess and as a result it remains a paleontological mystery to this day this is Sora Fagin axe or maybe Allosaurus whatever it should be called the thing that seems fairly certain is that this asteroid was a big animal estimates for Sora fagin axes body length have ranged from ten and a half meters or thirty four feet up to 14 meters or 46 feet meaning it was likely rivaling t-rex in size scientists in 1995 calculated the 40 meter estimate by scaling up bones from the closely related Allosaurus finding the original suggestion of this huge length was most likely correct however due to the relative incompleteness of the fossil remains known for this dinosaur it is difficult to get an absolutely accurate measurement though about 13 meters seems to be a reasonable average size it's also important as always to keep in mind that we are dealing with small samples of animals here and animals tend to vary a fair amount in their dimensions so it's very possible that some individuals were larger or smaller than the estimated averages being such a large predator Sora Fagin axe would have had an interesting lifestyle this species was discovered in rocks that represent a well known dinosaur bearing formation the Upper Jurassic morrison formation this sequence of rocks is also the home of many other famous dinosaurs such as Stegosaurus Diplodocus Brachiosaurus brontosaurus and Allosaurus Allosaurus in particular is very common find in these rocks so much so that it's actually the single most abundant large predator discovered in the Morrison Formation compared to Allosaurus Sora Fagin axe is not a common animal at all approximately less than one percent of the theropod fauna of the Morrison is composed of Sora Fagin axe in contrast to the 70 to 75 percent taken up by Allosaurus making it a challenge to figure out exactly how this creature probably lived since there were a lot of giant sauropods living at this time and place it has been suggested that this is what saw a Fagin Acts preyed on at least in part juvenile sauropods could have made a good meal for such an animal though it's also possible that this dinosaur scavenged when provided with the opportunity perhaps using its far larger body size to intimidate the smaller Allosaurus into giving up their kill or much like a lot of living carnivores today they could have employed a combination of both smaller theropods have additionally been suggested as being on the menu for the Giants or Fagin acts as well as small ornithopods and Stegosaurus the largest size but rare occurrence of Sora Fagin acts seems to reflect what we would expect for an ecosystem containing such a predator since it would be difficult to sustain a large population of big bodied carnivorous theropods however the smaller Allosaurus would be able to increase to greater numbers as they would require less prey to survive on another explanation is just that there's some kind of preservation bias towards the larger Sora Fagin acts meaning they were generally less likely to fossilize than Allosaurus as I mentioned towards the beginning of this video the history of this particular dinosaurs discovery naming and subsequent research is quite something and it's resulted in a lot of confusion over the years the first traces of this animals existence were encountered by a couple of cattlemen in Oklahoma back in 1931 when they came across some large bones in the ground the men soon informed a paleontologist who weren't the University of Oklahoma Jay Willis Stovall about what they had come across leading to Stovall setting up an operation to extract what he could from this newly identified locality he recognized that the bone bed contains the remains of all sorts of Morrison Formation taxa including animals such as Stegosaurus and the PATA Soros and so he saw the value in recovering these fossils as such he looked for help from the Works Progress Administration in order to get some workers who could extract the bones however due to the WPA policy of only being allowed workers who lived in the same County as the work places location the excavation ran into some problems without many paleontologists present who could identify fossils and knew what to look for many specimens were likely and a lot of things the weren't actually fossils were mistaken for them so in the end while many of the fossils were saved and could be put to good use there was a bit of a messy dig and few good records of the specimens they had to be sorted out however that's when an important realization was made stovall recognized that some of the bones that had managed to be salvaged appear to have come from a very large theropod seeing the similarities to the skeletons of the already known Allosaurus but on a bigger scale he decided that this creature needed to be named as a new genus and species therefore Stovall came up with the name Sora faggus Maximus meaning big eater of lizards but that's not the end of the story as it turns out it wasn't actually Stovall himself who first published the name for his new discovery instead it was a journalist writing for natural history Grace Ray who had come to visit the excavation site in 1941 in June of that year the issue of Natural History containing her article was published and so ray is now usually credited with the naming of this animal since this was the first time it had been published anywhere the problem with the article is that it did not contain a scientific description of the animal and so the name Sora faggus Maximus became what is known as an omen Newton and naked name meaning it could not be used as an official scientific name since it was not published with a sufficient description of the newly discovered organism it was meant to be given to the name remains a Norman Newton for many years and then to make things more complicated it was realized that the genus name Sora faggus had already been given to a tyrant flycatcher bird an actual lizard eater in 1831 as a result the name could no longer be used for the 16th dinosaur thankfully in 1995 paleontologist Dan sure came in to clear up the mess a bit not only that he properly described the material known for the animal but he also proposed a new name for the genus to include all the specimens he found referable to a distinct taxon from Allosaurus this is when Sora faggin ax was introduced to the world the lord of the lizard eaters however the controversy does not end there although Chur found evidence to support the classification of Sora Fagin acts as a separate genus to Allosaurus it has also been suggested that the two animals should belong to the same one in 1998 paleontologist David Smith performed an analysis of the remains of rarest Allosaurus individuals as well as fossils referred to surah Fagin acts and found that most of the bones did not differ enough from each other for a distinct genus to be justified so instead Smith proposed that the larger forms were actually just a different species of Allosaurus renaming surah Fagin acts Maximus to Allosaurus Maximus it seems though that these days most paleontologists prefer to still classify Sora Fagin acts as a distinct genus due to the uniqueness of the fossil vertebrae belonging to this animal which appear to be quite different to those of our Saurus despite other elements having some similarities it's also important to remember that the remains of this giant Alice orhid are very incomplete and so it's hard for paleontologists to identify many features that could be distinct and would therefore provide more evidence in support of a separate taxon hopefully far more complete skeletons belonging to Sora Fagin axe will be uncovered and described soon allowing us not only to confirm whether or not it is a different genus but also giving some more insight into how this fascinating fearsome predator lived and behaved now I'm sorry to bring the tone of this video down a bit and I apologize for talking about politics which is something we've tried to avoid doing here but it is an important issue that has a direct and severe impact on this channel and what we do you may have heard about article 13 it's a legislation created by the European Union that intends to help better protect copyright holders and their content on the Internet which in theory is a good thing however YouTube has said that the way it is currently written will result in its having hugely damaging unintended consequences it would basically make YouTube along with many other huge platforms such as Facebook Instagram Reddit and snapchat liable for any copyright infringement that is uploaded to their sites and therefore would force them to block the majority of anything uploaded from countries in the EU as well as blocking us from viewing most content uploaded from countries outside the Union this is exactly what YouTube says about creators in the EU YouTube and other platforms may have no choice but to block your existing videos and prevent you from loading new ones in the European Union unless you can prove that you own everything in your videos including visuals and sounds so that's pretty much every single one of our videos gone and that's really quite terrifying to consider this channel which we've spent years working on is under a significant threat if YouTube actually has to do what they say in order to comply with the new legislation people outside the EU will be affected too as you will no longer be able to watch the videos of various European youtubers in addition to non EU creators potentially losing their European audience my ultimate goal with this channel is to make our planets better in some way through educating about the past and present in order to help our future and I had hoped that one day I'd be able to use this platform to become involved in and help promote conservation efforts but it seems as though none of that will end up happening if everything we've worked towards here gets removed and we're unable to upload anymore YouTube is apparently doing all they can to sort out this issue and to find a way of rewriting article 13 before it becomes finalized so that they don't have to block millions of videos they also say that you can help by making your voice heard for example on Twitter using this hashtag to show the policymakers that real people will be negatively affected if this goes through the way it's written right now now I've also seen people claiming that YouTube is exaggerating the consequences of article 13 and that's in reality nothing will change and believe me I hope that's the case but it really doesn't seem that way right now and if there's any sort of risk that we might be losing this channel I feel as though I should act to help protect it as well as the countless other channels and livelihoods that could be lost well I hope you enjoyed this video and learn something new if you would like to find out more about our world its history and the wonderful life that surrounds us all please feel free to subscribe to the channel if you think we deserve it and if you would like to see more from us [Music] you

Channel: Ben G Thomas

Views: 286,166

Rating: 4.9494162 out of 5

Keywords: Biology, Science, Paleontology, Palaeontology, Dinosaurs, Animals, Nature, Wildlife, Ben, Thomas, Prehistory, Anatomy, Fossil, Bones, News, 7Daysofscience, Days, of

Id: ZIvNjODkdWs

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/E_v_a_n]

Could you elaborate your comment on Art 13 please?

[u/Lizardledgend]

I love Ben G. Thomas

[u/Spuknoggin]

It really is a shame. I hope they find a way to keep going. They make really good videos.