Discovery
The first specimens of Utahraptor were found in 1975 by Jim Jensen in the Dalton Wells Quarry in east-central Utah, near the town of Moab, but did not receive much attention. After a find of a large foot-claw by Carl Limoni in October 1991 James Kirkland, Robert Gaston, and Donald Burge uncovered further remains of Utahraptor in 1991 in the Gaston Quarry in Grand County, Utah, within the Yellow Cat and Poison Strip members of the Cedar Mountain Formation. Radiometric dating has shown that these parts of the Cedar Mountain Formation were deposited about 124 million years ago. The type specimen, CEU 184v.86, is currently housed at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, although Brigham Young University, the depository of Jensen's finds, currently houses the largest collection of Utahraptor fossils.
The type species (and only known species of Utahraptor), Utahraptor ostrommaysorum, was named by Kirkland, Gaston and Burge in 1993 for the American paleontologist John Ostrom, from Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History, and Chris Mays, of Dinamation International. Originally in the specific name the singular genitive ostrommaysi was used but this was in 2000 emended by George Olshevsky to the plural. Earlier it had been intended to name the species "Utahraptor spielbergi" after film director Steven Spielberg, in exchange for funding palaeontological research, but no agreement could be reached on the amount of financial assistance. Sculptor Raymond Persinger was included in James Kirkland's original abstract referencing Mr. Persinger's concepts regarding the claw structure.
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