Altispinax

What it was like

Altispinax is known only from a small amount of fossil material, mainly backbone pieces with unusually tall spines rising from them, the feature its name refers to. Because so little has been found, its full body size, proportions, and appearance are not well known. It was a carnivorous theropod, but beyond that, little can be said with confidence.

Its world

The exact place and time Altispinax lived are not well established from the fossils that survive. It is generally placed among the theropods, the meat-eating dinosaurs, but its scattered remains make it hard to say much more about its life or surroundings.

How it was found

Huene named Altispinax in 1923. Since then, the genus has remained one of the more uncertain names in dinosaur science: many paleontologists consider its remains too incomplete to say for certain how it relates to other theropods, and its classification is still debated today.