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You know, guys, I really wanted this one to be on time. This week, I was making plans to organize my time better, get more accomplished, and really find out where I wanted this website to go. I got close, but then I crashed my bike on Tuesday on the way to class. For most of the week, my wrist was sprained, my head hurt, and my knee was leaking, so I wasn't able to get much done (Even in terms of homework.) So, I suppose NEXT week is when I'll have to turn everything around.
Anyways, this creature here is the lovely Jurassic carnivore Dilophosaurus wetherilli from Sinemurian Arizona. At seven meters from nose to tail, it was certainly the largest predator in its habitat, although there has been debate over if it was the deadliest. It was armed with strong legs and sharp claws, but the crests on its head were too thin for any practical purposes, and it had a surprisingly weak bite strength for such a wicked-looking curve in its skull. It was more likely, then, that it was instead a scavenger or, at the most, hunted smaller game like mammals and fish. In fact, its skull closely resembles other piscivorous dinosaurs like Spinosaurus and Bayonyx, even though there is no direct line of lineage between them.
The Dilophosaurus genus was one of the most successful of the Jurassic, with remains being found across the world in India. While we don't know too much about its feeding habits, we have a very clear picture of the types of habitats it inhabited. Like most areas following the schism of Pangea, the environments Dilophosaurs thrived in were humid semitropical rain forests and also featured crocodylomorphs, prosauropods, and ancestral ankylosaurs. Again, even if they provided food if and when they died, this menagerie often found itself bullying Dilophosaurs more than being prey to them. In fact, many of our specimens are stressed, broken, scarred, and deformed. Still, they managed to push through this, and their versatility and agility helped them thrive for several million years.
