Yurgovuchia doellingi is an extinct genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in eastern Utah during the Cretaceous period around 130 million years ago.
Discovery and naming[]
The holotype was collected by Donald D. DeBlieux in 2005, from Don’s Place, part of the Doelling’s Bowl bone bed in Grand County, Utah. This bone bed is in the lower Yellow Cat Member of the Cedar Mountain Formation, dating probably to the Valanginian stage of the Early Cretaceous period, about 139-134.6 million years ago. Yurgovuchia was first described and named by Phil Senter, James I. Kirkland, Donald D. DeBlieux, Scott Madsen and Natalie Toth in 2012 and the type species is Yurgovuchia doellingi.
The generic name is derived from the Ute word yurgovuch, meaning coyote, a predator of similar size to Y. doellingi which currently inhabits the same region. The specific name, doellingi, honors the geologist Helmut Doelling, for his 50-plus years of geological research and mapping of Utah for the Utah Geological Survey and for causing the discovery of the Doelling’s Bowl dinosaur sites, in which Y. doellingi was collected.
Description[]
Yurgovuchia is known only from a single individual represented by an associated partial postcranial skeleton. The holotype and the only known specimen, UMNH VP 20211, includes cervical, dorsal, and caudal vertebrae as well as the proximal end of a left pubis. The preserved vertebrae are fused, indicating that the specimen was an adult at the time of death and not a juvenile specimen of Utahraptor. Instead of this, it represents a smaller and different species of dromaeosaurid, with an estimed size of 2.5 m (8.2 ft).
According to its describers in 2012, Yurgovuchia can be recognized from other dromaeosaurid taxa by the following characteristics: each side of the axial centrum have a single pneumatopore, third cervical vertebra with cranial end of the centrum not beveled, cervical prezygapophyses is flexed, cervical vertebrae epipophyses is above the postzygapophyseal facets, the pubis lacks pubic tubercle, the cranial faces of the centrum of caudal vertebrae are round, the cervical and dorsal vertebrae preserve hypapophyses without pneumatopores, the caudal prezygapophyses is distally elongated to the transition point, but not surpassing the length of a centrum.
Classification[]
It was said to be a junior synonym of the much larger Utahraptor, though recent studies have confirmed its validity.
Paleoecology[]
Yurgovuchia lived with sauropods such as brontomerus, iguanodonts such as hippodraco, and giant theropods such as Siats.
Gallery[]
