Dwarfallosaurus is a name given informally to a dinosaur from the Carnosauria group who lived during the early Chalk in southern Australia.
The found fossil parts are interpreted as belonging to a small relative of Allosaurus, a powerful predator of the Jurassic era. The "dwarfallosaurus" was probably about two meters tall and about six meters long. Until the finding of this species it was assumed that the Allosauridae were extinct thirty million years earlier. Australia was thus possible, as for the dicynodontes and the labyrinth dunes (Koolasuchus), a last refuge for allosaurs. The "dwarfallosaurus" hunted herbivores like Muttaburrasaurus and small hypsilophodons like Leaellynasaura.
The fossil consists of two damaged pieces of a single ankle leg, the leap or astragalus, which was found in 1979 by Tim Flannery in Victoria's Wonthog Formation and described in 1981 by Ralph Molnar; The registration is NMV Pl50070. Because this finding was a bit skinny, it was decided not to name a separate species. In morphology, the leg is most similar to that of Allosaurus, and therefore it is called informally a dwarf allosaur or more formal Allosaurus sp. [Ecies]. Further findings will need to indicate whether this identification was correct; He was defeated in 1983 by Samuel Welles who found that the bone looked more like that of an ornithomimide. In 2000, Daniel Chure, in a thesis, gave the name Allosaurus robustus, which was already read on a statue in the fossil museum, the National Museum of Victoria, but an unpublished nomen nudum remained.
The finding would have remained insignificant, does not it mean that Australia has hardly delivered residues of theropods. The "dwarfallosaurus" was therefore regularly portrayed in books and documentaries about the Australian dinosaur fauna, although we can not deduce from one leg a little concretion about its appearance.
In 2009, paleontologist Scott Hocknull stated that the "dwarfallosaurus" was identical to, or was a precursor of, or at least a related laundry of, the later-occurring Australian superintendent. In that case, it would not be an allosauride but a more distracted member of the Allosauroidea. This was confirmed more or less by a study by Roger Benson of 2009 who placed the "dwarfallosaurus" basically in the all-moronoid Megaraptora but denied an identity with Australovenator due to the difference in dating and the fact that the bone showed more similarities with the Fukuiraptor leap leg. . Literature
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