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Re: new dinosaurs



Tim Donovan wrote:

  It is considerably older than Dryptosaurus but the
latter is said to be a relic of the Cenomanian, when
Asian tyrannosauroid immigrants became isolated in
eastern America.

I think you may be overlooking the fact that the earliest evidence of tyrannosauroids comes from outside of Asia. We have two putative tyrannosauroids of Late Jurassic age: _Stokesosaurus_ from Utah and _Aviatyrannis_ from Portugal.


A highly derived braincase (for its Late Jurassic age) that was referred to _Stokesosaurus_ is probably tyrannosauroid. Time will tell if it really belongs to _Stokesosaurus_ (I would bet that it does; but I would also bet that the very primitive-looking jaw fragment does not.)

_Iliosuchus_ (Middle Jurassic, England) may represent an early tyrannosauroid; but we need something more than the ilia to go on.

As David mentioned, we also have EK tyrannosauroids from Europe (_Eotyrannus_), as well as North America (teeth), and possibly Sth America (_Santanaraptor_). And of course, China (_Dilong_).

The "Asian tyrannosauroid immigrant" hypothesis may be correct, but it requires more evidence, and has a few bugs to work out.


Tim