New Species of Tyrannosaurus!

[suspsy]

Meet Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. A perfect opportunity for CollectA, Haolonggood, PNSO, and Safari to make new Tyrannosaurus toys!


https://blog.everythingdinosaur.com/blog/_archives/2024/01/11/a-new-tyrannosaurus-species-is-described.html

[PrimevalRaptor]

Pretty cool to have a new Tyrannosaurus species published but my first thought was also "the flood of Tyrannosaurus models is not ending huh". 
Though T.mcraeensis would at least bring something new to the table (and hopefully not more JP-lookalikes since it's not T.rex)

[Faelrin]

As if there weren't enough Tyrannosaurus toys lol. But honestly this is an amazing find, and I'd certainly be all for adding this one to my collection. I figured there were probably more species of this genus out there, especially after that controversial paper popped up, but it was a thing I thought about time to time before as well. Can't wait to check out the study on this.

Here's a link to the article itself. Not paywalled thankfully.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-47011-0

Edit: On second thought, maybe they should hold off making a figure until there is better material? The only material consists of the:

including right postorbital and squamosal (Fig. 2), left palatine, fragment of maxilla, and lower jaws (Fig. 3) including left dentary, right splenial, prearticular, angular and articular, isolated teeth and associated chevrons.

From the paper (much of the upper skull and postcranial material is lacking):

[Brocc21]

Very interesting. We'll just have to see if this sticks around, or if it's a repeat of T. regina.

[MLMjp]

Holy Molly!

At least it`s a new specimen and not a reassignment fiasco like last time...plus it is separated from T.rex by 6/7 million years, kinda like how both species of Edmontosaurus are also separated by a couple million years.

I can see this becoming it´s own genus in the future though, but for now, hey!

[DefinitelyNOTDilo]

I saw some doubts posited online, from Carr iirc, but still, this does seem interesting.

[Bread]

Very interesting. We'll just have to see if this sticks around, or if it's a repeat of T. regina.

I saw some doubts posited online, from Carr iirc, but still, this does seem interesting.

I honestly think this new genus is here to stay. It makes sense honestly from how many similar Carcharodontosaurs we have as so many people state how similar they look.

I really love this artwork going around too:

[suspsy]

Regardless of whether or not it's a new species, just the fact that Tyrannosaurus was around seven million years earlier than previously thought is a pretty damned huge deal.

[Newt]

Assuming the dating is accurate, I'd say it's more likely this critter gets assigned a new genus than that it is subsumed into Tyrannnosaurus rex. There are few other dinosaur genera found in both southern and northern Laramidia (Parasaurolophus, Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, and Stegoceras come to mind), few found in both the Late Campanian/earliest Maastrichtian and the latest Maastrichtian (the same group but substitute Edmontosaurus for Parasaurolophus), and certainly no single species spans that whole range and time period. 

I noticed in the recently posted Nanotyrannus paper there was a "Hall Lake" taxon shown as sister to T. rex and wondered what that was about. It was an exceptionally short wait to find out!

[Flaffy]

Guess we know what PNSO's lipped Tyrannosaurus will be labelled as

[Fembrogon]

Dinosaurs of the Campanian-Maastrichtian Hall Lake Formation. Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis (NMMNH P-3698), the horned dinosaur Sierraceratops turneri, a giant but as yet undescribed hadrosaurid and the titanosaur Alamosaurus. Picture credit: Dalman et al.

Okay, all I want to say is I'm pretty sure this is the first I've heard of Sierraceratops (named in 2022!), and whomever does a T-mac model first better pair it with this giant chasmosaur too!

[VD231991]

Very interesting. We'll just have to see if this sticks around, or if it's a repeat of T. regina.

Gregory Paul's proposal to erect Tyrannosaurus regina and T. imperator for the T. rex specimens USNM 555000 (found by Kathy Wankel in 1988) and "Sue" respectively based on femur proportion and number of anterior incisiform dentary tooth was refuted by Carr et al. (2022). It is interesting to note, however, that the holotype of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was questionably referred by Paul (2022) to his proposed new species T. imperator, but recognition of NMMNH P-3698 as a distinct Tyrannosaurus species by Dalman et al. lends support to skepticism by Lehman and Carpenter (1990) and Sullivan and Lucas (2015) about NMMNH P-3698 being a T. rex. It'd be interesting to see how tyrannosaurid material from the Ojo Alamo Formation as well as the specimens TMM 41436-1 from Texas and UMNH 11000 from Utah compare with T. mcraeensis.   

Carr T.D., Napoli J.G., Brusatte S.L., Holtz T.R., Hone D.W.E., Williamson T.E., and Zanno L.E., 2022. Insufficient Evidence for Multiple Species of Tyrannosaurus in the Latest Cretaceous of North America: A Comment on "The Tyrant Lizard King, Queen and Emperor: Multiple Lines of Morphological and Stratigraphic Evidence Support Subtle Evolution and Probable Speciation Within the North American Genus Tyrannosaurus. Evolutionary Biology 49(3): 314-341: doi.org/10.1007/s11692-022-09573-1

Lehman, T.M. and Carpenter, K., 1990. A partial skeleton of the tyrannosaurid dinosaur Aublysodon from the Upper Cretaceous of New Mexico. Journal of Paleontology 64: 1026–1032.

Sullivan, R.M., and Lucas, S.G., 2015. Cretaceous vertebrates of New Mexico, in Lucas, S.G., and Sullivan, R.M., eds., Fossil vertebrates in New Mexico. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 68: 105–129.

[Brocc21]

[Bread]

Dinosaurs of the Campanian-Maastrichtian Hall Lake Formation. Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis (NMMNH P-3698), the horned dinosaur Sierraceratops turneri, a giant but as yet undescribed hadrosaurid and the titanosaur Alamosaurus. Picture credit: Dalman et al.

Okay, all I want to say is I'm pretty sure this is the first I've heard of Sierraceratops (named in 2022!), and whomever does a T-mac model first better pair it with this giant chasmosaur too!

Could Haolonggood's Pentaceratops be a temporary fill in? Or at least some minor modifications done to it so it can fit in?

Here's Gex_pdroche, over on instagram, conversion of Haolonggood Pentaceratops to Terminocavus:


Also, more artwork of the new Tyrannosaurus species, this time by Zubin Erik Dutta, also know as amatorydino on instagram:


Supposedly he got word of this new species months back and so his artwork was released once this paper was. Looks awesome yet natural, I've always enjoyed his work personally.

[Carnoking]

Between the reemergence of Nanotyrannus and this, it's already been a busy year for Tyrannosaur news. Wonder what next week will bring?

[andrewsaurus rex]

whether this turns out to be a new species, a new genus or just a mis-identification of good ole T.rex, Suspsy is right, the real news here is that a huge T. rex sized tyrannosaur lived 7 MILLION YEARS earlier than what has been currently believed.  This could really throw a wrench into T.rex ancestral lineage theories.

I hope the dating of this find is accurate..

[Dynomikegojira]

Yeah and added to the supposed possible Tyrannosaurus in the Judith River Formation and Alamotyrannus of Ojo Alamo definitely an game changer for sure and that's not even counting some of the Campanain specimens found in Asia that could represent Tarbosaurus.

[DinoToyForum]

I know I'm not the only one who thinks they should've called it T. mex.

[Faelrin]

That would have been funny. Missed opportunity there.

[Fembrogon]

I can definitely see T-mex becoming the "common" name for it still.