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tetanuran

tetanuran noun: any theropod of the clade Tetanurae, all theropods, including birds, that are more closely related to modern birds than to the genus †Ceratosaurus.

tetanuran: any theropod of the clade Tetanurae, all theropods, including birds, that are more closely related...
Image: Jordan Mallon, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

tetanuran (plural tetanurans)

  1. Any theropod of the clade Tetanurae, all theropods, including birds, that are more closely related to modern birds than to the genus †Ceratosaurus.
    • The oldest tetanuran, the crested allosauroid Cryolophosaurus, was discovered in Lower Jurassic rocks on Antarctica and is quite similar to allosauroids from Upper Jurassic rocks on several continents.1999 June 25, Paul C. Sereno, “The Evolution of Dinosaurs”, in Science, volume 284, number 5423, →DOI, pages 2137–2147

Adjective

tetanuran (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to the dinosaurs of the clade Tetanurae.
    • During Late Cretaceous times, the top predators in most Laurasian terrestrial ecosystems were the large-bodied tyrannosaurids, which suggests that this tetanuran clade may have originated after the split between Laurasia and Gondwana.1998 May 15, Scott D. Sampson et al., “Predatory Dinosaur Remains from Madagascar: Implications for the Cretaceous Biogeography of Gondwana”, in Science, volume 280, number 5366, →DOI, pages 1048–1051

Forms of tetanuran

pluraltetanurans

Origin of tetanuran

Tetanurae + -an

Questions about tetanuran

What does tetanuran mean?
Tetanuran means any theropod of the clade Tetanurae, all theropods, including birds, that are more closely related to modern birds than to the genus †Ceratosaurus.
What part of speech is tetanuran?
Tetanuran can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of tetanuran?
The plural of tetanuran is tetanurans.

Words near tetanuran in the dictionary

  1. tetanomotors
  2. tetanospasm
  3. tetanospasmin
  4. tetanospasmins
  5. tetanospasms
  6. tetanuran
  7. tetanurans
  8. tetanus
  9. tetanuses
  10. tetany
  11. tetarimycin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tetanuran (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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