Re: Tyrannosaur or Tarbosaurus

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

At 04:51 PM 6/25/97 PDT, you wrote:
>Howdy folks,
>
>I have been reading about dinosaurs from Asia and I am a little confused 
>about the "Current" correct name for the Tyrannosaur from the Batar 
>region of Mongolia. Originally this animal was named Tarbosaurus Batar 
>but some other texts I am familiar with are now calling this animal 
>Tyrannosaurus Batar. Which one is correct?

Two things:

I) "bataar" is not a region of Mongolia: it is Mongolian for "Warrior".  The
capital of Mongolia, for example, is Ulan Bator (variations in spelling),
which means "Red Warrior" (changed from the name Urga at about the time of
the Communist take-over... jeez, I wonder why? :-)

II) As for your question:  The first big tyrannosaur skull from Mongolia was
named Tyrannosaurus bataar.  A smaller form was subsequently found and named
Tarbosaurus efremovi.  Most paleontologists have considered these two to be
the same species, and from a genus distinct from Tyrannosaurus, and so
called it Tarbosaurus bataar.  Some others (Greg Paul, Ken Carpenter, and
myself) do not consider the differences between bataar and rex to be more
than species level differences, and so retain the name Tyrannosaurus bataar.
Others (George Olshevsky, for example) consider both forms distinct from
each other and from T. rex, so George has coined Jenghizkhan bataar for the
bigger Asian form.

I will have more to say about the Tyrannosaurus-Tarbosaurus situation at my
platform talk at the 1997 meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Hope this helps.

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