Forgotten Giants: Aerosteon

In many ways Aerosteon was your typical Allosaur: 30 feet long, two or three tons, equipped with sharp steak knife teeth and a fast and agile hunter. It was discovered in 2008 and given its name, which means "air bone", because it had hollow bones filled with air pockets like that of a bird. It also had an advanced respiratory system like a bird. But that's not what made Aerosteon special. What made Aerosteon special is that it was one of the very last true allosaurs alive and one of the few that managed to live into the cretaceous at all. It lived in South America alongside the dominant abelisaurs, carcharodontosaurs, and spinosaurs where it would have been an afterthought to the giants because of its small size. What it lacked in size it made up by having a powerful hatchet jaw function that the carcharodontosaurs didn't have, speed that was matched only by Carnotaurus among large contemporary theropods, intelligence it had from a large cerebrum and pack hunting skills that were shared only with carcharodontosaurs. Aerosteon wouldn't live until the end of the cretaceous due to the disappearance of the plentiful sauropod food source and the rise of the abelisaurs that began with Ekrixinatosaurus plus climate change. [img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Aerosteon_BW.jpg/250px-Aerosteon_BW.jpg[/img]