The generic name is derived from the Ute word yurgovuch, meaning coyote, a predator of similar size to Y. doellingi which currently inhabits the same region. The specific name, doellingi, honors the geologist Helmut Doelling, for his 50-plus years of geological research and mapping of Utah for the Utah Geological Survey and for causing the discovery of the Doelling's Bowl dinosaur sites, in which Y. doellingi was collected.[1]
Description
Yurgovuchia is known only from a single individual represented by an associated partial postcranialskeleton. The holotype and the only known specimen, UMNH VP 20211, includes cervical, dorsal, and caudal vertebrae as well as the proximal end of a left pubis. The preserved vertebrae are fused, indicating that the specimen was an adult at the time of death and not a juvenile specimen of Utahraptor. Instead of this, it represents a smaller and different species of dromaeosaurid, with an estimed size of 2.5 m (8.2 ft).[1]
According to its describers in 2012, Yurgovuchia can be recognized from other dromaeosaurid taxa by the following characteristics: each side of the axial centrum have a single pneumatopore, third cervical vertebra with cranial end of the centrum not beveled, cervical prezygapophyses is flexed, cervical vertebrae epipophyses is above the postzygapophyseal facets, the pubis lacks pubic tubercle, the cranial faces of the centrum of caudal vertebrae are round, the cervical and dorsal vertebrae preserve hypapophyses without pneumatopores, the caudal prezygapophyses is distally elongated to the transition point, but not surpassing the length of a centrum.[1]
Yurgovuchia compared to the fauna of the Yellow Cat Member from the Cedar Mountain Formation (Yurgovuchia in salmon)
Other dinosaurs are also known from Don's Place including the iguanodontians Iguanacolossus, polacanthines, and velociraptorine dromaeosaurids represented by a pubis (UMNH VP 21752) and a tentative radius (UMNH VP 21751). Many additional theropods have previously been described from the Yellow Cat Member, including the therizinosaur Falcarius and the small, predatory troodontids Geminiraptor from the lower part of the member, in addition, the large dromaeosaurines Utahraptor, small ornithomimosaursNedcolbertia, and unnamed eudromaeosaurs represented by a tail skeleton (UMNH VP 20209) from the upper part of the member.[1][2][3]
Yurgovuchia shared its environment and lived alongside other dinosaurs in the Lower Yellow Cat, such as the theropodsFalcarius and Geminiraptor, the sauropodsMierasaurus and the large iguanodontiansIguanacolossus.[2] There are also indeterminate goniopholidid crocodiles and the unnamed velociraptorines known from the Lower Yellow Cat.[1][2]
^Paul, G. S. (2016). The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2nd ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. pp. 151−327. ISBN9780691167664.
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