Gorgosaurus
Gorgosaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Upper Cretaceous, between about 76.5 and 75 million years ago.
| Gorgosaurus Temporal range: Upper Cretaceous
~76 mya | |
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| Gorgosaurus skeletal mount | |
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| Genus: | †Gorgosaurus
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Fossil remains have been found in the Canadian province of Alberta and possibly the U.S. state of Montana. It was closely related to T. rex and Albertosaurus. Gorgosaurus, like T. rex, had huge jaws with large, sharp, cone-shaped teeth, powerful legs, tiny arms and two-fingered hands.
Gorgosaurus lived in a lush floodplain environment along the edge of an inland sea. It was an apex predator: it preyed on ceratopsids and hadrosaurs.
Gorgosaurus spent as much as half its life in the juvenile phase before ballooning up to near-maximum size in only a few years.[1]
Most specimens of Gorgosaurus libratus have been recovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta. This formation was laid down in the later Cretaceous, between 76.5 and 74.8 million years ago.[2]
Gorgosaurus Media
Type specimen of Gorgosaurus sternbergi (AMNH 5664), now recognized as a juvenile Gorgosaurus libratus
Specimen AMNH 5458
Cast of specimen PIN 553–1, holotype of now invalid Gorgosaurus lancinator
G. libratus adult and subadult with a human for scale
Life reconstruction of Gorgosaurus libratus
Bob Bakker and a skeleton with several bone injuries, from the "Dinosaur Mummy: CSI" exhibit at the HMNS
Gorgosaurus - 01
Gorgosaurus juvenile specimen TMP 2009.12.14, featuring stomach contents comprising remains of Citipes
A graph showing the hypothesized growth curves (body mass versus age) of four tyrannosaurids. Gorgosaurus is shown in blue.
References
- ↑ Erickson, Gregory M. et al 2004. Gigantism and comparative life-history parameters of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Nature. 430 (7001): 772–775. [1]
- ↑ Eberth D.A. (2005). "The geology." In: Currie P.J. and Koppelhus E.B. (eds) Dinosaur Provincial Park: a spectacular ancient ecosystem revealed. Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, p54–82.