Raptorex

Raptorex (from the latin raptor:robber and rex:king) is a genus of carnivorous theropods and an primitive tyrannosoid that lived about 125 million years ago (during the early cretaceous period) in modernday China. It is probably an ancestor of the famous T-rex. The type species is Raptorex kriegsteini

Discovery and Naming
The holotype LH PV18 was illegaly smuggled out of China and bought on the infamous fair for fossils in Tucson, Arizona by Henry Kriegstein, an oculist from Hingham, Massachusetts, for a few ten thousand dollars in 2003. He send it to a team of paleontologists from Utah for preparation. At first they thouth it was a young Tarbosaurus, but after further investigation it was quickly discovered to a much older, still unknown species. It was described for the first time as Raptorex kriegsteini in 2009 by Paul Sereno and others. The name refers to the fact that it combines the size of the related Maniraptora with the general properties of the later tyrannosauroidea (like T-rex). Kriegsteini refers to the still living parents of Henry Kriegstein, survivors of the Holocaust.



Features
The most remarkable feature of raptorex are the arms: they have only 2 fingers and are verry small compared to his total size. Before its discovery scientists thought that the small arms of later tyrannosauroids (like T-rex) were so small because they became useless and that they would have disapeared if the dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct. However, if the arms of raptorex were already so small, why hadn't the arms of T-rex already diseppeared? This indicates that the arms weren't that useless after all. Like most small coelurosauria raptorex probably had some kind of primitive feathers, but since there is no preserved soft tissue this can not be confirmed.

size
The holotype, which was still ungrown, was about 2 m long and weighed (alive) 40 kg. An adult specimen had an estimated lenght of 3 m, a heap-hight of about a meter and weighed about 60-70 kg.