Teratophoneus
| Teratophoneus | ||||||||||||
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Teratophoneus |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Cretaceous (late Campanium ) | ||||||||||||
| 76.1 to 74 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Teratophoneus | ||||||||||||
| Carr et al. , 2011 | ||||||||||||
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Teratophoneus (from the Greek teratos = "monster" and phoneus = "murderer") was a genus of large carnivorous dinosaurs from the Tyrannosauridae family . The only known species is Teratophoneus curriei .
description
The holotype of teratophoneus consists of a fragmentary skull and parts of the post-cranial skeleton . The fossils were originally assigned to four different individuals, but probably only come from a single subadult animal.
Teratophoneus differs from other tyrannosaurids by a relatively short skull, as can be derived from the smaller number of teeth and the short and steeply sloping maxilla . Since it is known from other tyrannosaurines that the skulls of subadult animals are more elongated than those of adult individuals, Carr et al. that the skull of an adult Teratophoneus was also shorter ("short-snouted").
Carr et al. estimate the weight of the holotype based on the thigh at around 667 kg. That made Teratophoneus probably bigger than Alioramus .
Systematics
Teratophoneus is counted within the Tyrannosauridae to the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae , which were common in both Asia and North America during the Upper Cretaceous and were among the largest land carnivores of the time. Teratophoneus was more advanced than the Asiatic Alioramus and faced the Daspletosaurus , Tarbosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus branches .
Abbreviated cladogram according to Carr et al. (2011)
| Tyrannosaurinae |
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Location
The remains of Teratophoneus were found in Kane County , southern Utah, in the layers of the Kaiparowits Formation , which were dated to Late Campanium (approximately 76.1 to 74 million years ago). Lythronax lived a little earlier , the remains of which come from the Central Campanian Wahweap Formation (approx. 80 million years old) in the same area. Other North American tyrannosaurids from this period are only known from localities north of the Rocky Mountains . In addition, Teratophoneus is the first ever described representative of the Tyrannosauroidea from the Kaiparowits Formation.
Teratophoneus expands the geographical and temporal range of the Tyrannosaurinae and, together with other new genera such as Bistahieversor , allows new insights into the early diversification of the Tyrannosauroidea in North America.
literature
- ^ A b Thomas D. Carr, Thomas E. Williamson, Brooks B. Britt, Ken Stadtman: Evidence for high taxonomic and morphologic tyrannosauroid diversity in the Late Cretaceous (Late Campanian) of the American Southwest and a new short-skulled tyrannosaurid from the Kaiparowits formation of Utah. In: Natural Sciences . Vol. 98, No. 3, 2011, pp. 241-246, doi : 10.1007 / s00114-011-0762-7 , PMID 21253683 .
- ↑ Mark A. Loewen, Randall B. Irmis, Joseph JW Sertich, Philip J. Currie, Scott D. Sampson: Tyrant Dinosaur Evolution Tracks the Rise and Fall of Late Cretaceous Oceans. In: PLoS ONE. Vol. 8, No. 11, 2013, e79420, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0079420 .
