Fossil remains of this slenderly built and long-legged theropod are known from Late Cretaceous deposits of northern Africa. It is another quite obscure species as far as dinosaur toys go, maybe Safari picked it out to demonstrate that they are keeping up with palaeontological research, Deltadromeus was named and described in detail in 1996; the Carnegie figure was produced the following year.
Most of the body is covered with contrasting shades of grey, while the throat blushes with a deep red hue and the sides of the head look, well, it looks like it’s had an unfortunate run in with some tippex – bold and quite gaudy streaks of white run from above the eye down to the tooth row.
The tail has the aforementioned downturn frequently seen in Carnegie Collection theropods to support the critter in a tripod pose. In this instance it has also allowed the right foot to be posed mid-stride so just the tips of the toes contact the ground. This makes a nice change to the usual flat footed stance in most figures, and in this case adds movement to the figure and justifies the tripod pose in my opinion.
Fossils of Deltadromeus indicate that it exceeded 13 meters in length, so even though Deltadromeus agilis may have been one or the longest theropod dinosaurs ever, this figure is confusingly one of the smallest dinosaurs in the Carnegie Collection, measuring just 13 cm long. Given the 1:40 scale of this figure one can only presume that it represents a young individual. Overall it is a nice little figure.
Available from Safari.com (here) and Amazon.com (here)
Disclaimer: links to Ebay and Amazon on the DinoToyBlog are affiliate links, so we make a small commission if you use them. Thanks for supporting us!
I just found this little guy at a garage sale in perfect condition, I was really impressed. A bit dated but a Great 90’s figure. A resculpt would be nice, but since the skull has not been disvoered yet, it would mean another generic head.
It turns out a Deltadromeus skull hasn’t been found yet. However, this figure’s hands are pronated. When was it discovered theropods couldn’t pronate their hands?
You could be right – the pose is exceedingly similar.
This figure seems to be based off the Deladromeus in this picture: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1059324954039279376QvlgAm
Either that, or the pictured Deltadromeus is based off the figure, as they are almost identical (barring colour)!
Both Deltadromeus seem to be anatomically incorrect as they lack the small horns Deltadromeus had in front of its eyes. As others mentioned, the figure is too small to represent an adult individual. I think an updated sculpt of this figure with the above problems fixed could be beautiful. I sure would like it if a Deltadromeus like that were made.
This figure seems to have been retired three days ago (good, now replace it with an updated version ;)).
I would like if they updated this sculpt and made a full size version.
I believe that when it was first introduced, estimates had it closer to 26 feet in length (about when Serano brought Carcharodontosaurus into the public’s eye).
You are right, but even a 26 foot (8 m) long critter reproduced at a 1:40 scale would be 20 cm long (about a third longer than this figure).