Paleo-Lee's life reconstruction
Vespersaurus is a genus of noasaurine theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period, found in the Rio Paraná Formation in the Paraná Basin, Brazil. The type and only species is V. paranaensis, which would have lived in the giant prehistoric Botucatu Desert. The taxon is notable for its distinct, functionally monodactyl foot anatomy, where the singularly large third digit would have borne most of the weight while walking.
It inhabited desert areas and was adapted to this way of life. Fossil imprints of strange narrow traces, discovered as early as the 1970s in the Cruzeiro de Oeste region, could have been created by this dinosaur or its direct evolutionary ancestor.
It was a smaller (only about 1.5 meters long and about 15 kg weighing) predatory dinosaur from the family Noasauridae. Its fossils were discovered in the so-called Bauru Geological Group (Rio Paraná Formation) and were formally described by a team of paleontologists in June 2019.
The Vespersaurus is a possible relative of the Farlowichnus trackmaker.
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