Re: a question and a request

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

At 01:09 PM 6/1/99 PDT, Jordan Mallon wrote:
>Just recently, I was looking through a childrens dinosaur book and read 
>about an as-yet-unnamed tyrannosaur.

If you give the date (and name?) of the book, that might REALLY REALLY help.

>The bones were found by Jim Jensen and 
>two of his students and were later inspected by Dale Russel.  The bones were 
>described as "not _Allosaurus_, not _Tyrannosaurus_, but certainly one of 
>the tyrannosaur family." From what I can gather, I think the fossils may be 
>from "Dry Mesa" in Utah.  Does anyone know if this specimen has been named 
>yet?  I know the information isn't too much to go on, but I'm curious to 
>know.

Sounds like it could be _Stokesosaurus cleavelandi_: thought by Jensen to be
a tyrannosaurid (mostly on the shared presence of the midline ridge of the
ilium).

However, is there any mention about how big the critter was?  If it is a
book from the early-to-mid-1970s, and talking about a "_Tyrannosaurus_-sized
meat-eater from Dry Mesa", they are referring to _Torvosaurus tanneri_.

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