The late Cretaceous tyrannosauroid, Dryptosaurus, is a historically significant genus that due to the fragmentary nature of its preserved material has been largely forgotten and ignored. Dryptosaurus aquilunguis was one of the first theropods ever discovered and the first theropod discovered in the Americas. Originally named Laelaps by Edward Drinker Cope in 1866, Othniel Charles Marsh would rename the genus Dryptosaurus in 1877, upon discovering that the name Laelaps was already being used for a species of mite.
