Maleriraptor
A Late Triassic herrerasaurian dinosaur from India.
Maleriraptor is a genus of herrerasaurian saurischian dinosaurs from the Late Triassic (Norian) Upper Maleri Formation of India. It is known from a partial skeleton and contains a single species, M. kuttyi. The genus is notable for its early diverging position within Herrerasauria.
Quick Facts
- Species
- kuttyi
Facts from the source article.
Discovery and naming
The holotype specimen, ISIR 282, was collected prior to 1985 from outcrops of the Upper Maleri Formation in the Pranhita–Godavari Basin near Annaram, south-central India. It includes the first sacral rib, part of the second sacral rib, a vertebra that is either a caudosacral element or the first in the series, an anterior caudal vertebra, the right ilium, both ends of the right pubis, and part of the left pubis. The specimen is accessioned at the Indian Statistical Institute. ISIR 282 was first described in a 2011 publication by Novas and colleagues, who noted a unique character combination distinguishing it from related species but refrained from naming it because it could not be compared with Alwalkeria from the slightly older Lower Maleri Formation. In 2025, Ezcurra and colleagues named Maleriraptor kuttyi as a new genus and species. The generic name combines a reference to the Upper Maleri Formation with the Latin word raptor, meaning 'thief'. The specific name honors Tharavat S. Kutty, the discoverer and initial describer of the holotype. The authors acknowledged that a lack of overlapping material still prevented comparison with Alwalkeria, but they named the species anticipating species-level differences between the two formations.
Classification
Novas and colleagues in 2011 reported ISIR 282 as an indeterminate dinosauriform, with their phylogenetic analysis placing it in a polytomy that included Silesaurus, Ornithischia, Theropoda, Sauropodomorpha, and three herrerasaurs. They considered its placement highly problematic. In 2021, Novas and colleagues referred the specimen to an indeterminate herrerasaur. Ezcurra and colleagues in 2025 scored Maleriraptor in an updated phylogenetic dataset, recovering it as an early-diverging member of Herrerasauria. Scoring in another matrix yielded similar results, placing it as a non-herrerasaurid herrerasaur.
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