11 Facts About Pyroraptor

Pyroraptor is an extinct genus of paravian dinosaur, probably a dromaeosaurid or unenlagiine, from the Late Cretaceous Ibero-Armorican island, of what is southern France and northern Spain.

Additional material from the Vitoria Formation and the Tremp Group, both in Spain, was referred to Pyroraptor, including five pedal digits, one manual digit, a piece of a metacarpal, a right radius, a dorsal vertebra, and a tail vertebra.

However, due to the disarticulated nature of Pyroraptor remains, it's unknown if they belong to the same individual.

Pyroraptor olympius was a dromaeosaurid, a small, bird-like predatory theropod that possessed enlarged curved claws on the second toe of each foot for predation; these claws were 6.

Pyroraptor was covered in feathers, as many of its relatives, like Microraptor and Sinornithosaurus, had plumage.

Related searches

Pyroraptor was included in a 2014 phylogeny of Microraptor, as with most trees including Pyroraptor, this caused a polytomy as seen in the cladogram below.

The 2022 description of Vectiraptor greeni noted that the foot morphology of Pyroraptor olympius had more similarities with unenlagiines than with eudromaeosaurs, lending support to the idea that European raptors were closely related to Southern forms from Africa and South America.

Two separate studies from 2011 regarding unenlagiines, where the teeth of Pyroraptor were compared to those of South American Unenlagiines found that although not significantly, some similarities in cross section were noticeable.

However, a 2022 study points out that if Pyroraptor is an unenlagiid, then this would mean that not all unenlagiids would have fluted, unserrated teeth.

Pyroraptor olympius is known from the Argiles et Gres a Reptiles Formation of what is Southern France.

At that time, Pyroraptor would have coexisted alongside a variety of species such as Rhabdodon priscus, Zalmoxes, Ampelosaurus atacis, Lirainosaurus astibiae, Atsinganosaurus velauciensis, some undescribed titanosaurids, Arcovenator escotae, Tarascosaurus salluvicus, Struthiosaurus sp.