Growth strategies of apex predators from the Late Triassic of South Africa.

This proposal seeks to understand the growth and anatomy of four new species of early-branching theropod dinosaurs from South Africa. We propose high-resolution scans of skull and limb bones of this new material, suitable for anatomical reconstruction and digital osteohistology. The resulting data will be used to test the position of these new species on the tree of theropod evolution and understand their growth strategies and physiology. These lines of enquiry will address a major palaeontological question, namely, why theropod dinosaurs became the apex predators of the late Mesozoic, replacing other incumbent carnivorous lineages after the end-Triassic mass extinction. The material examined here represents the first theropod species from the Triassic of southern Africa. The uniqueness of these specimens, the difficulty in obtaining segmentable CT images, and the high resolutions required for digital osteohistology, require use of non-destructive synchrotron microtomography.