Siats Pronunciation

Fun Facts

• ✓The only Siats fossil found so far belonged to a subadult, meaning the fully grown adult would have been even bigger than scientists currently estimate.
• ✓Siats was named after a terrifying water monster from Ute folklore that ate people, and paleontologists chose that name because the dinosaur dominated its ecosystem just like the monster dominated Ute myths.
• ✓When Siats was alive around 93.9 million years ago, tyrannosaurs in North America were only the size of a human, because giant predators like Siats kept them from evolving into giants.
• ✓Siats was described in 2013 by Lindsay Zanno and Peter Makovicky from just a handful of bones, yet those fragments were enough to confirm it was one of the largest predators ever found in North America.
• ✓Scientists still debate exactly which family Siats belongs to, with proposals including Megaraptora, Neovenatoridae, Allosauroidea, and even Tyrannosauroidea, making it one of the most classification-contested carnivores of the Cretaceous.