Review and photographs by Brontozaurus, edited by Suspsy
I recently visited the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum (FPDM) while on a trip in Japan. The museum is located near the Kitadani Formation, where many of Japan’s dinosaur species have been found and described. It was well worth it, but even before I got to the FPDM, I was encountering Japanese dinosaurs in toy stores.
Fukuiraptor isn’t a dinosaur name one hears too often – at least outside of Japan. First discovered in the 1990s, the “thief of Fukui Prefecture” is only known from fragmentary remains between a few specimens, consisting mostly of arm and leg bones. Like its relative Megaraptor from South America, Fukuiraptor was initially described as a dromaeosaur, only for later studies to reveal that the large fossil claw discovered among the remains belonged on the predator’s thumb, not its toe.
Japan isn’t usually the first country to come to mind when we think of dinosaurs; we all know the famous fossil bone beds and the dinosaurs they contain from western North America, China, or Argentina, but most people, even dinosaur enthusiasts, would be hard pressed to name a single Japanese dinosaur.
