Re: big meat-eaters (Epanterias)

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/12/00 2:38:22 PM EST, dinoland@mailcity.com writes:

<< Epanterias was that large allosaurid that Bakker described sometime in the 
late 80's.  I recall that he described it as possibly being larger than T. 
rex, and being the last of its kind (the last allosaur).  To him, this proved 
Cope's Law, regarding species getting larger and larger through time until 
they become extinct. >>

Epanterias amplexus was actually described by E. D. Cope in 1878 from a 
couple of huge cervical and dorsal vertebrae, a coracoid, and a metatarsal, 
all associated and apparently from a single individual (AMNH 5767; as far as 
I know this is a syntype series, with no specimen singled out as the 
lectotype). It bounced around Sauropoda for a while, until Osborn & Mook 
(1921) showed it was not a sauropod but a theropod indistinguishable from 
Allosaurus. Madsen, in his monograph on Allosaurus fragilis, regarded it as 
based on a very large Allosaurus individual (Osborn and Mook said it was 20% 
larger than any other Morrison theropod then known). Bakker's (1988) 
contribution was to separate the genus from synonymy with Allosaurus, as I 
recall claiming that it occurred stratigraphically later than A. fragilis and 
was likely a large descendant genus, but most workers still keep it in 
Allosaurus, either as a synonym of A. fragilis or as a separate species, 
Allosaurus amplexus. He also referred some large theropod caudals that he 
found to the genus. I've compared the figures of E. amplexus in Osborn & Mook 
with figures of the corresponding bones of A. fragilis in Madsen (1976) and 
there seems to be no real difference except size. If it had the proportions 
of an A. fragilis, it would have been about 11-12 meters long, which is in 
the T. rex size range (around 12.5 meters).