A better version of my tyrannosauroid cladogram made with TreeView, including a few more genera thrown in. Now you may be wondering why I threw Nanotyrannus in there, if it’s pretty much thought to just be a juvenile T. rex. Well, Alioramus was thought to be a juvenile Tarbosaurus, but then A. altai proved that wrong, so it might just be the same situation. If so, I propose that Nanotyrannus is a North American alioramid tyrannosauroid (“alioramid” is a term I made up for my so-called “Alioramidae” consisting of Alioramus, Xiongguanlong, and now possibly Nanotyrannus). Alternatively, they might fall within Tyrannosauridae and thus be “Alioraminae” instead, all of them now being alioramine tyrannosaurids. Again, this is just armchair paleontology and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, as it’s based solely off of at-face-value morphology and locations of the different genera. It makes sense to me, but evolution doesn’t always have to make sense.
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A better version of my tyrannosauroid cladogram made with TreeView, including a few more genera thrown in.

Now you may be wondering why I threw Nanotyrannus in there, if it’s pretty much thought to just be a juvenile T. rex. Well, Alioramus was thought to be a juvenile Tarbosaurus, but then A. altai proved that wrong, so it might just be the same situation.

If so, I propose that Nanotyrannus is a North American alioramid tyrannosauroid (“alioramid” is a term I made up for my so-called “Alioramidae” consisting of Alioramus, Xiongguanlong, and now possibly Nanotyrannus).

Alternatively, they might fall within Tyrannosauridae and thus be “Alioraminae” instead, all of them now being alioramine tyrannosaurids.

Again, this is just armchair paleontology and shouldn’t be taken too seriously, as it’s based solely off of at-face-value morphology and locations of the different genera. It makes sense to me, but evolution doesn’t always have to make sense.

40-foot long tyrannosaurs with long arms.

So, I was reading up on Appalachian dinosaurs (all 7 of them), and I noticed something interesting.

First off, we have Appalachiosaurus, dryptosaurid tyrannosauroid of the late Cretaceous of Alabama. Only one specimen, a 23-foot long juvenile/subadult/whathave you, has been found. Dryptosaurids (so far including Dryptosaurus and Appalachiosaurus) are different from tyrannosaurids in that they have smaller heads and long, three-fingered arms like more basal tyrannosauroids such as Dilong, Guanlong, and Eotyrannus. These guys were in charge of Appalachia (the eastern side of North America during the Cretaceous, while it was split by the Western Interior Seaway), while their tyrannosaurid kin were off in Laramidia (the western side), meaning that there might have been very few to no tyrannosaurids in Appalachia, same going for dryptosaurids in Laramidia.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. While reading the Wikipedia article for Hypsibema, an Appalachian hadrosaur from around the same time as Appalachiosaurus, they mentioned that they “had found remains of other dinosaurs, including teeth belonging to Tyrannosaurus rex” in the site where it was discovered. Now, how are there going to be Tyrannosaurus teeth in Appalachia, if tyrannosaurids like T. rex are Laramidian? Simple, they aren’t T. rex teeth at all.

Remember how I said the only discovered specimen of Appalachiosaurus was a 23-foot subadult? Well, this obviously means that it still had some growing to do and at the very least should hit around 35 feet long upon adulthood (not basing that on any calculations, I’d need the average size of Tyrannosaurus specimens near or at the same age as the Appalachiosaurus specimen). Since tyrannosaur teeth are pretty similar all around, it’s more than possible that since they were as big as discovered Tyrannosaurus teeth, those who found them assumed they were, when in actuality they might just belong to a big Appalachiosaurus.

Also, Tyrannosaurus growth series show that the arms don’t really grow much, staying around the same size from juveniles to adults, just that they become proportionally smaller as they grow, their heads undergoing most of the changes. So I’m thinking that an adult Appalachiosaurus would have slightly smaller-looking arms in comparison to the subadult (though they would still be quite long in comparison to tyrannosaurid arms).

And yes, I’m planning on drawing something related to this.

Here, have a bunch of ceratopsian skulls from the Nasutuceratops paper. (This was apparently made before the description of Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, so they’re labeled simply as “New Kaiparowits taxon” A and B, respectively)
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Here, have a bunch of ceratopsian skulls from the Nasutuceratops paper.

(This was apparently made before the description of Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, so they’re labeled simply as “New Kaiparowits taxon” A and B, respectively)

I knew I was forgetting something! Yet another ceratopsian has sprung up, apparently from the depths of some collection of fossils, previously undescribed. Everyone give a warm welcome to Spinops sternbergorum (or, if you’re Gregory S. Paul, Centrosaurus sternbergorum). I like the combination of frill, brow, and nasal horns.
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I knew I was forgetting something!

Yet another ceratopsian has sprung up, apparently from the depths of some collection of fossils, previously undescribed. Everyone give a warm welcome to Spinops sternbergorum (or, if you’re Gregory S. Paul, Centrosaurus sternbergorum).

I like the combination of frill, brow, and nasal horns.

Source: blogs.smithsonianmag.com

randomsignal: From Paleoblog: Linheraptor exquisitus was approximately eight feet long and 50 pounds, and would have been a fast, agile predator that preyed on protoceratopsians. Within the Dromaeosauridae family, Linheraptor is most closely related to another recently discovered species Tsaagan mangas. Tsaagan’s skull indicates that it is more primitive than Velociraptor, and the skeleton of the new species should help reconstruct the series of evolutionary changes within the Dromaeosauridae.
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randomsignal:

From Paleoblog:

Linheraptor exquisitus was approximately eight feet long and 50 pounds, and would have been a fast, agile predator that preyed on protoceratopsians. Within the Dromaeosauridae family, Linheraptor is most closely related to another recently discovered species Tsaagan mangas. Tsaagan’s skull indicates that it is more primitive than Velociraptor, and the skeleton of the new species should help reconstruct the series of evolutionary changes within the Dromaeosauridae.

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