Re: bulldog tyrranosaurs

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 03:39 PM 2/4/97 +1100, Adam Yates wrote:
>
>A few days ago Tom Holtz  made a comment about the "short snouted 
>bulldogedness" of Albertosaurus sarcophagus. I found this intriguing 
>because the skull I had been assuming represented the species (the skull 
>called "A. arctunguis" by Greg Paul in PDOTW) certainly does not fit this 
>description. I sent a post containing a mass of queries about this skull 
>that never made it to the list (though it did go to Tom - Thankyou for 
>your reply). Nevertheless I still have a few queries. 1. Where can you 
>find a good illustration of true A. sarcophagus?

Carpenter's paper on tyrannosaurids in 1992 (in Mateer & Chen's Aspects of
Nonmarine Cretaceous Geology, China Ocean Press: a hard book to find, I
know) has a series of skulls from most tyrannosaurid taxa.  Tracy Ford has
illustrations of A. sarcophagus skulls in Olshevsky's Historical
Dinosaurology.  There is a reconstructed skull of A. sarcophagus
(unfortunately, with missing parts restored after T. rex in some regions) in
the collections of the AMNH, but it isn't on display...

>2. Does the rather short 
>maxilla from the Tornillo Formation of Texas belong to A. sarcophagus (or 
>does it at least have the same degree of short snoutedness)? I once made 
>an illustration of a T rex skull (based on the AMNH specimen) but 
>substituted in the shape of the Tornillo maxilla, the result was a 
>grotesque bulldog like face indeed! 

An interesting thought indeed!  However, the Tornillo material is even more
truncated than the maxilla of A. sarcophagus.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:th81@umail.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661

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