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All the United States New Jersey Trenton Dryptosaurus Skeletal Mount

Dryptosaurus Skeletal Mount

The way these carnivorous dinosaurs are posed is an homage to a classic work of paleoart.

Trenton, New Jersey

Added By
John Meszaros
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“Leaping Laelaps”-inspired mount of two Dryptosaurus skeletons   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
“Leaping Laelaps”-inspired mount of two Dryptosaurus skeletons   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
Charles Knight’s “Leaping Laelaps” painting that inspired the pose of the museum’s reconstruction   Charles Knight / Public Domain
Dryptosaurus from another angle   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
Up close view of fighting Dryptosaurus   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
Another view of the reconstruction   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
Hadrosaurus, another New Jersey dinosaur, on display in the Written in the Rocks exhibit   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
Tanytrachelos, a reptile with frog-like legs that was found in prehistoric New Jersey. Also on display at the museum   Johnmeszaros / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Discovered in 1866 in a New Jersey marl pit, Dryptosaurus was the first partially-complete skeleton of a carnivorous theropod dinosaur in North America.

The paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope originally named the species Laelaps after a hunting dog from Greek mythology. But after it was discovered that the taxonomic name had previously been used for a species of beetle, Cope’s paleontological rival Othniel Marsh renamed the dinosaur Dryptosaurus (from the Greek for “tearing lizard”) in 1877.

Dryptosaurus is a distant and somewhat smaller relative of Tyrannosaurus rex. In the late Cretaceous when both species lived, North America was divided down the middle by an interior sea, which allowed Dryptosaurus to evolve without competition from its larger cousin.

Though Dryptosaurus has fallen into relative obscurity today, it was one of the most popular prehistoric animals in North America in the late 1800s, primarily due to a painting called “Leaping Laelaps” created by the artist Charles Knight. Knight’s work depicted two of these dinosaurs fighting as active, agile animals—a sharp contrast to other paleoart of the time which illustrated dinosaurs as sluggish, tail-dragging monsters.

In 2014, the New Jersey State Museum honored the theropod with a mount of two Dryptosaurus skeletons posed like the subjects of Knight’s painting. Since the original Dryptosaurus remains are incomplete—consisting of a partial jaw, hips, legs, claws and some vertebrae—many parts of the two skeletal reconstructions are estimates based on closely related tyrannosaurids such as Appalachiosaurus, whose fossils have been found in the southeastern United States.

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Dinosaurs Skeletons Natural History Museums Fossils Animals

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The New Jersey State Museum is open Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Admission is free, though donations are greatly appreciated. The Dryptosaurus reconstruction is located on the second floor of the museum in the “Written in the Rocks” exhibit. Street parking is available near the museum, along with a limited number of free visitor spots in the nearby State House garage.

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Johnmeszaros

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December 31, 2019

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  • https://www.state.nj.us/state/museum/explore-exhibits.shtml
  • https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-dryptosaurus-got-its-name-68864150/
  • http://prehistoricbeastoftheweek.blogspot.com/2015/05/dryptosaurus-beast-of-week.html
Dryptosaurus Skeletal Mount
205 W State St
Trenton, New Jersey, 08608
United States
40.221065, -74.773092
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Old Barracks Museum

Trenton, New Jersey

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Trenton

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