Balaur bondoc

Balaur bondoc is a species of paravian theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period, in what is now Romania. It is the type species of the monotypic genus Balaur, after the balaur, a dragon of Romanian folklore. The specific name bondoc means "stocky", so Balaur bondoc means "stocky dragon" in Romanian. This name refers to the greater musculature that Balaur had compared to its relatives. The genus, which was first described by scientists in August 2010, is known from two partial skeletons. Some researchers suggest that the taxon might represent a junior synonym of Elopteryx.

Balaur bondoc

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
BalaurPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Dromaeosauridae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Dromaeosauridae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Dromaeosauridae

Time the record covers

At most 6.2 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 72.2 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Late Cretaceous — about 2 of 2 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72–72 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72–71 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71–71 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences71–70 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences70–70 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences70–69 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences69–69 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences69–68 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences68–68 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences68–67 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences67–67 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences67–66 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences66–66 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences72.7 Mya65.5 Mya

2 occurrences of Balaur bondoc on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

2 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

2 formations

Densuș-Ciula — 45.60°N, 22.85°ESebeş — 45.99°N, 23.57°E

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The named rock units Balaur bondoc has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Balaur bondoc and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Balaur bondoc and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

25 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Balaur bondoc, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Balaur bondoc

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itBalaur through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Csiki et al. 2010