Albertosaurus sarcophagus – Wikipedia

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L’ Albertosauro ( Albertosaurus sarcophagus ) He was a carnivorous theopod of the Tyrannosauri family who lived in the late Cretaceous more than 70 million years ago.

Museum reconstruction of Albertosaurus in its various stages of growth

Albertosaur, so called in honor of the Canadian region where the first remains of this specimen were found, was a bipedal and carnivorous dinosaur; smaller than the other Tyrannosaurids, in fact, could reach 9 meters in length on average [first] [2] For 3 of height and a weight between 2.9 [3] and 3.7 tons [4] ; Albertosauri large in size could also reach 10 meters in length [5] . Albertosaurus shared common characteristics with the other specimens of the family of Tyrannosauridi : carnivorous biped, balanced the heavy head and the mighty torso with the long tail and had only two fingers for each higher limb.

Partial remains of a skull of AlberTosaurus kept at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The skull, which in adult specimens reached the meter in length [6] , was equipped with 60 sharp teeth (the others Tyrannosauridi they owned a smaller number); Furthermore, characteristic of all Tyrannosauridi , Albertosaurus was heterodon. Above both eyes there was a short ridge, probably used in courtship rites to attract a partner. The rear limbs were long and ended with a paw with four fingers, the hallux was very short, unlike the other three phalanges.

All these characteristics suggest that Albertosaurus, in addition to belonging to the aforementioned family of the tyrannosaurids, was an ancestral ancestral of the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex.

L’ AlberTosaurus He could reach the speed of 40-48 km/h.

A 1994 Azero stamp depicting a AlberTosaurus who attacks a Corythosaurus.
The Red deer river that flows near Drumheller, Alberta. Three quarters of the remains of AlberTosaurus They were discovered along this river.

The first find of AlberTosaurus It was a partial skull found in an outcrop of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation in 1884. Another specimen was discovered by the shipments of the Geological Survey of Canada with the famous geologist Joseph B. Tyrrell at the head; In 1892 Edward Drinker Cope appointed the species Laelaps thickened [7] , however ignoring that the name ” Laelaps “He was already used for a kind of mite. His rival of all time, Othniel Charles Marsh, then renamed him Dryptosaurus ; Cope refused his name given to him by his rival number one and in 1904 he asked Lawrence Lambe to change the name from Laelaps thickened in Dryptosaurus incrassatus [8] . Later, however, the paleontologist and geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn pointed out that the name of Dryptosaurus For that example he was wrong, with argument in favor that the dental traces were very different between the two species (as already mentioned, the Albertosauro had a dentition other than all the other Tyrannosauri); Osborne then called the specimen with what would have been his final name: Albertosaurus sarcophagus , from Alberta, land where the animal was found, and from the Greek words become , meat, e phagein , eating, or meat eater. [9]

Albertosaurus o Gorgosaurus? [ change | Modifica Wikitesto ]

In 1914 the paleontologist Charles H. Sternberg found another skeleton of Tyrannosauridae on the website of the Provincial Park of Dinosaurs. Lawrence Lambe baptized the specimen Gorgosaurus libratus . [ten] Other specimens were found in Alberta and Montana. Finding that there were too few differences to separate the two species, Dale Russell declared that the term Gorgosaurus it was only a synonym junior per AlberTosaurus ; The Gorgosaurus libratus He was renamed Albertosaurus libratus . The insertion of the Gorgosaurus in the family of Albertosauridi It extends the time span of the species back of several millions of years and its geographical distribution south of hundreds of kilometers. [first]

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In 2003, Phil Currie compared several skulls of tyrannosaurids And he came to the conclusion that the two species are more distinct than he had thought. The decision to use one or the other name is rather arbitrary, given the little difference between the two specimens. Recognized this, Currie however recommended that AlberTosaurus It is Gorgosaurus are considered as two separate species. In the meantime, several remains of AlberTosaurus In Alaska and New Mexico and Currie proposed to return to the matter only after an accurate study of the new specimens found. [11] Many authors have followed the Currie line [2] [3] [twelfth] , but others don’t. [13]

L’ AlberTosaurus It is known to the public to be the “T.rex ancestor”. It appears in the film In search of the enchanted valley 8 – Adventure between the ice , in documentaries Prehistoric Park , Jurassic Fight Club It is The gear march , in the TV series Primeval: New World , in the anime Dinosaur King and by video game such as Ark: Survival Evolved , Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis , Jurassic Park: Builder , Jurassic World: The game, Jurassic World Evolution, Jurassic World Evolution 2 e in Jurassic World Alive .

  1. ^ a b Dale A. Russell, Tyrannosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of western Canada , in National Museum of Natural Sciences Publications in Paleontology , vol. 1, 1970, pp. first –34.
  2. ^ a b Thomas R. Holtz, Tyrannosauroid , in Weihampel, David B.; Dodson, Peter; & Osmólska, Halszka (eds.). (a cura di), The Dinosauria , Second Edition, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004, pp. 111–136, ISBN 0-520-24209-2.
  3. ^ a b Erickson, Gregory M., Makovicky, Peter J.; Currie, Philip J.; Norell, Mark A.; Yerby, Scott A.; & Brochu, Christopher A., Gigantism and comparative life-history parameters of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs , in Nature , vol. 430, 2004, pp. 772–775, two: 10.1038/nature02699 .
  4. ^ Per Christiansen, & Fariña, Richard A., Mass prediction in theropod dinosaurs , in Historical Biology , vol. 16, n. 2-4, 2004, pp. 85–92, doi: 10.1080/0891296042331284313 .
  5. ^ Gregory M. Erickson, Currie, Philip. J.; Inouye, Brian D.; & Wynn, Alice A., Tyrannosaur life tables: an example of nonavian dinosaur population biology , in Science , vol. 313, 2006, pp. 213–217, two: 10.1126/science.1125721 , PMID  16840697 .
  6. ^ Philip J. Currie, Allometric growth in tyrannosaurids (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of North America and Asia , in Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences , vol. 40, n. 4, 2003, pp. 651–665, DOI: 10.1139/e02-083 .
  7. ^ Edward D. Cope, On the skull of the dinosaurian Laelaps thickened Cope , in American Philosophical Society, Proceedings , vol. 30, 1892, pp. 240 –245.
  8. ^ Lawrence M. Lambe, On Dryptosaurus incrassatus (Cope) from the Edmonton Series of the Northwest Territory , in Contributions to Canadian Palaeontology , vol. 3, 1904, pp. first –27.
  9. ^ Henry F. Osborn, Tyrannosaurus and other Cretaceous carnivorous dinosaurs , in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History , vol. 21, 1905, pp. 259–265.
  10. ^ Lawrence M. Lambe, On a new genus and species of carnivorous dinosaur from the Belly River Formation of Alberta, with a description of the skull of Stephanosaurus marginatus from the same horizon , in Ottawa Naturalist , vol. 28, 1914, pp. 13–20.
  11. ^ Philip J. Currie, Cranial anatomy of tyrannosaurids from the Late Cretaceous of Alberta ( PDF ), in Acta Palaeontologica Polonica , vol. 48, n. 2, 2003, pp. 191–226.
  12. ^ Robert E. Ricklefs, Tyrannosaur ageing , in Biology Letters , vol. 3, n. 2, 2007, pp. 214–217, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2006.0597 .
  13. ^ Thomas D. Carr, Williamson, Thomas E.; & Schwimmer, David R., [0119: As for 2.0.CO;2 A new genus and species of tyrannosauroid from the Late Cretaceous (middle Campanian) Demopolis Formation of Alabama ], in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology , vol. 25, n. 1, 2005, pp. 119–143, DOI: 10.1671/0272-4634 (2005) 025: No] 2.0.co; 2 .

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