Daemonosaurus

Daemonosaurus is an extinct genus of possible theropod dinosaur from the Late Triassic of New Mexico. The only known fossil is a skull and neck fragments from deposits of the latest Triassic Chinle Formation at Ghost Ranch. Daemonosaurus was an unusual dinosaur with a short skull and large, fang-like teeth. It lived alongside early neotheropods such as Coelophysis, which would have been among the most common dinosaurs by the end of the Triassic. However, Daemonosaurus retains several plesiomorphic ("primitive") traits of the snout, and it likely lies outside the clade Neotheropoda. It may be considered a late-surviving basal theropod or non-theropod basal saurischian, possibly allied to other early predatory dinosaurs such as herrerasaurids or Tawa.

==Discovery== left|thumb|232x232px|The Whitaker Quarry of Ghost Ranch as it appears in 2019. Daemonosaurus is known from a single fossil, the holotype CM 76821, which consists of a skull, mandibles, an atlas bone, an axis bone, other neck vertebrae, and rib fragments. This specimen was discovered in a sediment block of collected from the Coelophysis Quarry (also known as the Whitaker quarry) at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. This site, preserving the informal late Norian or Rhaetian "siltstone member" of the Chinle Formation, is famous for abundant fossils of Coelophysis, an early theropod. C-4-81, the block containing CM 76821, was collected in the early 1980s by E.H. Colbert and is now housed in the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Fossils of Coelophysis were also present in the block. CM 76821 was first uncovered by a volunteer preparing the block while it was on loan to State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.