You should see one of these guys perform a Tombstone Pildriver with those tiny arms. Quite the spectacle!

You should see one of these guys perform a Tombstone Pildriver with those tiny arms. Quite the spectacle!

Albertosaurus: a name so dignified and proper it almost sounds silly. Then you read its species name, sarcophagus, and things quickly get METAL!!! That’s sort of how the general population reacts to this dinosaur. Yeah, yeah, smaller cousin of T. rex, so it’s not as scary, kinda white bread, yada yada. Even a quick glance at the details, though, makes this animal look much scarier and more interesting. Come, face your fears and read on!

Exhibit Spotlight Albertosaurus sarcophagus img2

This chart collects all currently published information on tyrannosaurid skin coverings.

Christiansen, P., & Fariña, R. A. (2004). Mass prediction in theropod dinosaurs. Historical biology, 16(2-4), 85-92.

Erickson, G. M., Makovicky, P. J., Currie, P. J., Norell, M. A., Yerby, S. A., & Brochu, C. A. (2004). Gigantism and comparative life-history parameters of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Nature, 430(7001), 772-775.

Persons IV, W. S., & Currie, P. J. (2016). An approach to scoring cursorial limb proportions in carnivorous dinosaurs and an attempt to account for allometry. Scientific reports, 6(1), 1-12.

Dececchi, T. A., Mloszewska, A., Larsson, H., Holtz, T. R., & Habib, M. B. (2019). The fast and the frugal: Divergent locomotory strategies drive limb lengthening in theropod dinosaurs. bioRxiv, 785238.

Carr, T. D., Varricchio, D. J., Sedlmayr, J. C., Roberts, E. M., & Moore, J. R. (2017). A new tyrannosaur with evidence for anagenesis and crocodile-like facial sensory system. Scientific reports, 7, 44942.

Currie, P. J. (2000). Possible evidence of gregarious behavior in tyrannosaurids: Gaia, v. 15.

McCrea, R. T., Buckley, L. G., Farlow, J. O., Lockley, M. G., Currie, P. J., Matthews, N. A., & Pemberton, S. G. (2014). A ‘terror of tyrannosaurs’: the first trackways of tyrannosaurids and evidence of gregariousness and pathology in Tyrannosauridae. PLoS One, 9(7), e103613.

Bell, P. R., Campione, N. E., Persons IV, W. S., Currie, P. J., Larson, P. L., Tanke, D. H., & Bakker, R. T. (2017). Tyrannosauroid integument reveals conflicting patterns of gigantism and feather evolution. Biology letters, 13(6), 20170092.

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