I picked up my big book of the Dinosauria today and opened it to a completely random page, I then looked down this page to the very bottom of the left hand corner and saw at the very edge of an enormous chart the name Kakuru Kujani. I then decided it would be today's dinosaur. It turns out very little is known about Kakuru, so the research was kind of difficult, but what I did find was pretty interesting. Kakuru Kujani was an Early Cretaceous theropod from what is today Australia.The name means "Rainbow Serpent of the Kujani," the Kujani being an aboriginal Australian group. There were no approximate measurements of the animal I could find, probably since the only known bone from it is a tibia, the lower half of the leg bone. However, because I know about comparative anatomy, and because I'm the most swagalicious scientist ever, I decided to use the tibia measurements to try and figure out the size of the rest of the animal. I found that the femur would be 42.96 centimeters long, making the total leg length 75.96 centimeters. Using the length of the leg I calculated the total body length to be somewhere in the large neighborhood of 317.5 cm, or 3.175 meters. I got these numbers by comparing the lengths with those of Kakuru's close relative, Ornitholestes. Ornitholestes did have a disproportionately long tail, so I had to kind of try to work that into the measurements.
Another interesting fact about Kakuru is that it is one of the only dinosaur fossils ever found to be "opalized," that is, instead of normal rock, the bones are comprised of opal. This gives the bones a striking blue appearance.
Seriously though, das HOT
Being a theropod, Kakuru was most likely a carnivore. Many scientists agree that it would probably have had long slender arms to match its elegant legs. At the end of these arms would've been wicked claws, ideal for dragging away small corpses. The only picture I could find of the actual animal was this one, where it kind of looks like, to me at least, a serial killer.
I did, admittedly, add the knife, but still that face. Gives me shivers.
Well that's Kakuru. Sorry if this entry was kind of lame, finding stuff was hard, and I just wanted to get something out since there weren't many in september. Anyway that's it. Next time will be one of my favorite dinosaurs, Troodon.
-Athos
Weishampel, David B., Peter Dodson, and Halszka Osmólska. The Dinosauria. Berkeley: University of California, 1990. Print.
