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...
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...
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. That is unless of course you’re from Japan; they...
For most of the field’s history, the bulk of paleontological research has occurred in North America, a fact reflected in the average dinosaur shelf lineup. There’s certainly no shortage of figures representing classics like Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops, and Stegosaurus, while more obscure species from elsewhere in the world languish in the shadows. However, the rise of new discoveries from once (paleontologically)...
