Tyrannosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of western Canada
Author
Russell, Dale A.
text
1970
1970-01-31
National Museum of Natural Sciences, Publications in Palaeontology, No. 1
Ottawa
book
31640
10.5281/zenodo.1040973
9d2c1913-225a-4801-aa8c-817ac9c399bb
1040973
cf.
Tyrannosaurus rex
Distribution
Upper
Edmonton
Formation
,
Alberta
.
Referred Specimens
NMC 9950
phalanx
of
pes (7 miles east
of Huxley
, centre sec. 10, tp. 34, rge. 22, W. 4th
mer
., about 170 feet above
Kneehills
Tuff").
NMC 9554
fragment
of
cervical centrum (20 feet below and 200 yards south of
locality
for NMC 9950).
Comments
The
presence
of
Tyrannosaurus
in Lance equivalent upper Edmonton strata
has
been noted several times {see
Sternberg 1949
;
L. S. Russell 1964
;
Langston 1965
).
This
record is based primarily on a badly eroded and
shattered
skeleton observed by Sternberg in
1946
, weathering
out
of a fractured concretion
high
on
the
face
of
a cliff".
Langston revisited
the
locality in 1960 and collected a
phalanx
, noting
that the
skeleton was even more badly damaged than when
Sternberg
discovered it, and
that
little
of
it still remained in situ.
The
phalanx (
NMC 9950
) is
the
fourth one of
the
fourth
toe
and measures 53 mm in
length
and about 80 mm across its distal articulation. Hence it is
larger
and broader than
the
corresponding element
in
Albertosaurus
and
Daspletosaurus
. Unfortunately only
the
first phalanx
of the fourth
toe is known in
Tyrannosaurus
(
Osborn
1906: fig. 11
).
This
bone is
relatively
broader than in any known Oldman or Edmonton form, and by analogy it seems probable
that the
above
fourth
phalanx may
indeed belong
to
Tyrannosaurus
. The vertebra (
NMC 9554
) is generically indeterminate.