CIT’s gorgeous Evolution of Life: Sinoraptor coin joins the ammonite with a reincarnation in one-kilo form via AllCollect

Although this is the opening line of this article, regular readers will already know we’re going to love this one! Coins featuring prehistoric life have always been a firm favourite. Fantastic subjects with a strong visual impact and an almost universal popular appeal means that dinosaur coins in particular, are very well recieved.

The best of those, in our opinion, has been CIT’s beautiful ‘Evolution of Life’ series, which is a kind of spiritual successor to the producers multi-award winning ‘Endangered Wildlife’ series, itself also issued for Mongolia. Now six issues old, Evolution of Life is quickly turning into one of the best coin series being issued today about any subject.

While the originals are an ounce in weight, we were surprised and pleased to see AllCollect had CIT produce a one-kilogram variant with an identical design and finish. Late 2018 saw the beautiful Ammonite design appear in the bigger, 100 mm diameter format, but now we’re seeing a second one – Sinoraptor. This was the fifth issue in the original series, so they’ve jumped over the Trilobite, Icthyosaur and Pterosaur coins for some reason, probably because the subject here is so recognisable, bringing up memories of the Jurassic Park logo.

The original one-ounce coin was superb, this one loses nothing in the expansion. You can see from our mock-up lower down just how much bigger this new variant is. Just 99 of these are being struck, so if you’re lucky enough to get one, you’ll be in a very small club. Boxed with aa Certificate of Authenticity, this should be available to order any time now and we’d expect a retail around the €3,000 mark.

SINORAPTOR

Sinraptor is a theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic and the name Sinraptor comes from the Latin prefix “Sino”, meaning Chinese, and “raptor” meaning robber. Despite its name, Sinraptor is not related to dromaeosaurids (often nicknamed “raptors”) like Velociraptor. Instead, it was a carnosaur distantly related to Allosaurus. Sinraptor and its close relatives were among the earliest members of the Jurassic carnosaurian radiation. Sinraptor still remains the best-known member of the family Metriacanthosauridae, with some older sources even using the name “Sinraptoridae” for the family.

The holotype specimen of Sinraptor was uncovered from the Shishugou Formation during a joint Chinese/Canadian expedition to the northwestern Chinese desert in 1987, and described by Philip J. Currie and Zhao Xijin in 1994. Standing nearly 3 meters tall and measuring roughly 7.6 meters in length, two species of Sinraptor have been named. S. dongi, the type species, was described by Currie and Zhao in 1994. A second species, originally named Yangchuanosaurus hepingensis by Gao in 1992, may actually represent a second species of Sinraptor. Whether or not this is the case, Sinraptor and Yangchuanosaurus were close relatives, and are classified together in the family Metriacanthosauridae. Holtz estimated it to be 8.8 meters in length. In 2016 other authors stated that the holotype (IVPP 10600) was a subadult and estimated the size of the probable adult specimen (IVPP 15310) at 11.5 meters and 3.9 tonnes.(Source: Wikipedia)