Re: Royal Tyrrell Museum Update #9: Fieldwork

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

Darren Tanke wrote:

> delve into this in detail, although I have recently learned I will be
> preparing a mostly complete and disarticulated subadult DASPLETOSAURUS
> tyrannosaur skull we collected about three years ago from Dinosaur
> Provincial Park. Much of the postcrania was there too- but it was evident
> that this part of the body had been trampled/scavenged as most of the pieces
> were badly broken up.

     What is the word on Phil Currie's Tyrannosaur study?   I hear he 
might be making a case for putting Daspleteosaurus in whith Albertosaurus.
     I'd also like to hear opinions on taxonomic assignments based on 
teeth.  This is apparently unadvisible with most types of dinosaurs, but 
I understand that theropod teeth are quite diagnostic, which is why Phil 
Currie and Ken Carpenter advocate the ligitamacy of Aublysodon, and place 
the Jordan Theropod ("Stigyvenator") within this genus.
     I saw the cast of the new Acrocanthosaurus skull that Ken and Phil 
Currie will be describing.  It is unbeleivably huge, just a hair below 
the size of the AMNH 5027 (Tyrannosaurus rex) skull.  When I first saw it 
I thought for sure that it was an oddly distorted T.rex skull.  The 
"orbital knob" also looks like the above mentioned T.rex's, very rugose 
and shaped the same (sort of a ball shaped knob with a hemispherical 
ridge shadowing the orbit).

LN Jeff