Ozraptor

Ozraptor (meaning "Australian thief") is a genus of possibly abelisauroid theropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic (Bajocian) Colalura Sandstone[1] of Australia, known from fragmentary remains.

In 1966 a group of four Year 12 Scotch College geology students on a field exercise found a fossil at the Bringo Railway Cutting site near Geraldton, which they showed to professor Rex Prider of the University of Western Australia.

[2] Re-evaluation of the bone in the 1990s after being prepared out of the rock by John Albert Long and Ralph Molnar classified the fossil as the shinbone of a genus of theropods.

Three diagnostic features were established enabling it to be upheld as a distinct species of dinosaur: the ascending process of the astragalus had a rectangular shape with a straight upper end; the astragalar facet had a vertical ridge; the medial condyle was weakly developed.

In 2005 another study, by Oliver Rauhut, suggested that it was indeed a theropod, and more specifically, a member of the Abelisauroidea based on the presence of the distinct vertical median ridge on the astragalar groove.

Hypothetical life restoration depicting Ozraptor as an abelisaur