Concavenator (meaning Cuenca hunter) is a genus of carcharodontosaurian dinosaur that lived in Spain during the Early Cretaceous epoch, about 125 million years ago.
The genus contains a single species, Concavenator corcovatus named and described in 2010 from a nearly complete skeleton collected from Las Hoyas fossil site of La Huérguina Formation.
This specimen was also found preserving integument traces, such as scale impressions on the feet and tail, which is characteristic of many of the lithographic limestones within La Huérguina Formation.
[1] In 2010 the specimen was catalogued MCCM-LH 6666 and described by paleontologists Francisco Ortega, Fernando Escaso, and José Luis Sanz, used as the holotype for naming the new genus and species of carcharodontosaurid dinosaur Concavenator corcovatus.
In their description, the team noted that some anatomical elements had to be left unprepared (without removing the encasing rock) given the delicate nature of the preserved integument traces.
Paleontologist Roger Benson from the University of Cambridge speculated that one possibility is that "it is analogous to head-crests used in visual displays", but the Spanish scientists who discovered it noted it could also be a thermal regulator.
[11] The hypothesis that the bumps along the ulna represented muscular insertion points or ridges was subsequently examined and the results were presented at the 2015 meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
Elena Cuesta Fidalgo, along with two of the researchers who initially described Concavenator (Ortega and Sanz), attempted to reconstruct its forearm musculature to determine if the ulnar bumps would be explained as an inter-muscular ridge.
Cuesta Fidalgo noted that the proximal part of the ulna is affected by fracturing and abrasion, with certain features that would have shifted when compared to their position in the bone while the animal was alive.