#carnufex

#Archovember Day 8 - Carnufex carolinensis

By Tas Dixon

Etymology: THE BUTCHER

First Described By: Zanno et al. 2015

Classification: Biota, Archaea, Proteoarchaeota, Asgardarchaeota, Eukaryota, Neokaryota, Scotokaryota, Opimoda, Podiata, Amorphea, Obazoa, Opisthokonta, Holozoa, Filozoa, Choanozoa, Animalia, Eumetazoa, Parahoxozoa, Bilateria, Nephrozoa, Deuterostomia, Chordata, Olfactores, Vertebrata, Craniata, Gnathostomata, Eugnathostomata, Osteichthyes, Sarcopterygii, Rhipidistia, Tetrapodomorpha, Eotetrapodiformes, Elpistostegalia, Stegocephalia, Tetrapoda, Reptiliomorpha, Amniota, Sauropsida, Eureptilia, Romeriida, Diapsida, Neodiapsida, Sauria, Archosauromorpha, Crocopoda, Archosauriformes, Eucrocopoda, Crurotarsi, Archosauria, Pseudosuchia, Suchia, Paracrocodylomorpha, Loricata, Crocodylomorpha

Status: Extinct 

Time and Place: 231 million years ago, in the Carnian of the Late Triassic.

Carnufex is known from North Carolina.

Physical Description: If you’ve seen that post about the ten-foot crocodile that ruled North America, this is it. The holotype specimen is around 10 feet long and 5 feet tall, but it wasn’t fully grown yet. It’s less complete than you may expect - it’s some isolated skull bones, two vertebrae, and a humerus. The skull pieces indicate a long, narrow skull, which would have been triangular in outline. The front of the upper jaw had a subnarial gap (a gap in between the premaxilla and maxilla, causing a “dip” in the toothrow), similar to what we see in some early theropods such as Dilophosaurus. Parts of the skull have a heavily rugose texture, indicating the potential presence of a keratinous covering as in modern crocodilians. The humerus of the holotype is unusually small compared to the skull, indicating Carnufex had fairly short arms. Because of this, it was probably bipedal at least some of the time.

Diet: Carnufex was an apex predator. Its diet may have consisted of dicynodonts, early dinosaurs, other pseudosuchians, or other bizarre archosauromorphs.

Behavior: Being large and bipedal, Carnufex was probably an active, warm-blooded predator. Unfortunately little else is known about its behavior; we can only make inferences based on its modern relatives and other large carnivores. It likely lived solitary most of the time, coming together to mate and, if there happen to be very large herbivores in the region, mob-hunt. Like modern crocodiles, it may have communicated with deep bellowing sounds.

Ecosystem: Carnufex comes from the Pekin Formation of North Carolina. The environment was tropical, being close to the equator in the Triassic, and a river ran through it. Other animals from this formation include dicynodonts, the potentially venomous archosauromorph Uatchitodon, a traversodont cynodont, and other pseudosuchians such as the aetosaurs Gorgetosuchus and Coahomasuchus. There’s also a second, smaller crocodylomorph from the same area that has yet to be described.

Other: Carnufex is one of the largest Triassic crocodylomorphs yet known, and also the most basal. It indicates that through crocodile-line evolution, they went through a period of body size increase in the mid-Triassic, before undergoing a decrease in size in the later Triassic and Jurassic.

~ By Henry Thomas

Sources under the Cut

image credit: Bajadasaurus by Raphtor

I know you guys haven't heard from me in a while, so allow me to make it up to you with a whole set of new homebrewed dinosaurs! There's 13 dinos in there with illustrations thanks to Wikimedia (and thanks to the fact that these are actual creatures that once roamed the earth so the images are pretty accurate).

I tried to get a good spread of creatures and power levels in order to be challenging and useful in most levels of play. Also note that I gave some of them features that they may not have had in reality because I am running under the assumption that these are fantasy versions of dinos. Just because the carnotaurus's horns are only meant for ornamentation and species identification doesn't mean I didn't give it a Ram attack.

Also, you might be hesitant to use some of these dinos' names that are named after places. To that I say: use their roots! Argentinosaurus could be named for its armor instead of Argentina. Utahraptors could live above in the mountains. Bajadasaurus could be named for it's head being low to the ground (baja=low). Saltasaurus... idk enjoys licking salt deposits.

The dinos include:

Acrocanthosaurus: CR 6, a weaker T-Rex with a goofy-looking spine.

Achiornis: CR 1/8, basically a chicken.

Animantarx: CR 1, a weaker ankylosaurus.

Argentinosaurus: CR 8, largest dino discovered; a gargantuan sauropod.

Bajadasaurus: CR 6, they just discovered this guy! It's a sauropod with a mohawk of spikes.

Carnotaurus: CR 10, a stronger T-Rex with a ram attack.

Carnufex: CR 7, imagine a horse crossed with an alligator.

Dilophosaurus: CR 2, a more cunning deinonychus. I opted not to use the Jurassic Park version that can spit venom.

Giganotosaurus: CR 12, no, not "Giganto-saurus." But yes it's an even bigger T-Rex.

Iguanodon: CR 1, a hadrosaurus with spiky thumbs and a beak.

Saltasaurus: CR 3, an smaller but heavily-armored sauropod.

Spinosaurus: CR 15, an apex predator. A semi-aquatic T-Rex sized crocodile with grasping claws and a giant sail on its back.

Shringasaurus 

By @stolpergeist​ 

Versus 

By @i-draws-dinosaurs​

Carnufex 

Click on the above links to refresh your memory about these animals! And feel free to use this post to debate and argue on what people should vote for!