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Franoys — Tyrannosaurus Rex Tristan Otto skull bones.
#anatomy #animal #berling #biology #biped #bones #carnivorous #comparison #cranium #dinosaur #dinosauria #frontal #human #infography #king #lateral #lizard #measurements #measures #mount #museum #otto #paleontology #restoration #rex #scale #scaled #size #skull #theropod #theropoda #tristan #tyrannosaur #tyrannosaurus #tyrant #zoology #gracile #paleozoology #paleobiology #tyrannosaurine #tyrannosaid #morphotype
Published: 2016-09-15 19:02:11 +0000 UTC; Views: 12287; Favourites: 110; Downloads: 0
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Description
Restoration, measurements and bones description. Compared with a human skeleton and skull. The specimen is nicknamed Tristan Otto, it's catalog number is MB.R.91216, and is currently exhibited at Berlin's Natural History museum.I added the mutiple skull views from tristan's skull as a png file, as well as the human skeleton and skull in another png file.
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Comments: 32
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Franoys
Since Tristan was 17 years old and with a skull already 1.5 m long, looking at the growth curve of T. rex it looks it still to grow quite a bit.
Do you think it could have exceeded the likes of Sue or Scotty in size ?
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Some of the comments written under this deviation are very old; the age estimation of 17 years old was based on information displayed on the Museum Fur Naturkunde website but they took this particular estimate down; so I'm not sure if it holds, perhaps in the end the specimen is not that young.
It is true however that other specimens that are believed to be young, like MOR 555 which is said to be 16 years old maximum in Horner & Padian 2004 or UCMP 118742 hich is estimated to be 16 in Erickson et al 2006 are also very large; Stan is also estimated to be 18 years old and it's bones compare favorably with most of the specimens that have had their bones measured. The growth curves done for Tyrannosaurus in Erickson 2004 or in Hutchinson et al 2011 are done with small samples and much like with humans and other vertebrate taxa some individuals mature or grow faster than others, so I don't think we can just throw Tristan in the growth curve even if it was 17. It is posible that it could have reached larger sizes if it kept living and it was really that young but I don't dare saying it could have exceeded the largest specimens. We are also not certain of how large exactly Tristan is until further description is provided.
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This is the only drawing I've seen of Tristan, and it matches up nicely with photos I've seen - any chance of a full skeletal?
Also, is it just me, or does the skull seem a little narrower than other T. rex?
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Yeah, the skull resembles almost to more close to Tarbosaurus than Tyrannosaurus.
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Any chance for a 17 yr old T Rex to be sub adult or close to full adulthood? The extra gracile morph of this specimen leads me to think it hasn't reached its full robusticity yet. If Sue at almost equal length weighs 8800 kg, I think Tristan could very well weigh 7800 kg or more, after all its torso should be nowhere near as narrow as a carcharodontosaurid.
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It's about the same size as the T.rex holotype, maybe slightly larger.
7600 kg is a safe bet.
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Is the entire mandible known? If so, that thing was seriously slack-jawed
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Hence if you look at my previous comment, it has a really funny looking head for a Tyrannosaurus rex. I either suspect trickery on the plaster reconstruction of the skull or perhaps a new species in the genus or just a weird looking individual.
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its important to keep in mind that all specimens are from different regions and different points in time (68-65 mya) so we should expect to see different looking individual`s.
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True, it's just that Tristan looks as wildly different as Samson.
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Is it just me, but does Tristan's head look kinda odd for a Tyrannosaurus? The lack of a "dip" at profile perspective between the nassals and lacrimals makes the head look awfully boxy much like the outdated plaster skull of CM 9380. I can't help, but feel the curvature of the maxilla also looks kinda unusual.
www.lifecuts.com/wp-content/up…
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I'm in awe of the fact that while a Tyrannosaurus' skull/head was somewhat shorter than a grown man is tall, it would have weighed as much as a whole polar bear in life (link ).
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Verry fucking cool
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You are right on that. Tristan skull is not particularly wide, but T rex has got really wide skulls in general. Not just the snout, but specially the posterior cranial portion , due to adaptations for a stronger bite and binocular vision. The lower jaw bones are also really deep, and they have a bigger amount of bone surface than most theropod skulls, even if they developped aditional fenestra holes to lighten up the skull's weight as much as possible.
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Thank you! It was hard to find good references for it.
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we could try and calculate the total lenght of Tristan with this image
www.germany.travel/media/news/…
btw where do your numbers come from for the skull?
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The numbers came from the dentary, and then studying the proportions between it and the skull. The dentary is about 82,3 cm long according to this image:
cdn.theculturetrip.com/wp-cont…
The image is included in a book the museum fur naturkunde is selling, I believe. Anyways, it is official. (I'll be traveling to berlin soon so I might get my hands on the book, I'm told it includes several photographs from the bones and possibly measurements (?))
82,3 cm is pretty big for a dentary, almost as big as Sue's.
Then I used this model the team that worked on Tristan used to make the skull replica
dinosaurpalaeogerman.files.wor…
and composited with this other amazingly good photograph from the original fossil skull:
dinosaurpalaeogerman.files.wor…
I used gimp measure tool to measure the pixels and did some math and the results are the ones you see above.
As an eyeball-ish comprobation, you can tell the dentary isn't that big when compared with the rest of the skull, so a big dentary in a skull big compared with the dentary yields a very big skull. Note how the numbers match most stimations cited for it both in the Berlin's musseum and the articles about the specimen that have been posted in the web ( they all say the skull is about 1,5m, so in this chase it seems they got it right)
I did some attemps with the photograph you adjunted, I did it with the measurements for the digital model the museum's team made (they made it to see how the mount would fit best in the room, and to make the 3d prints for the missing bones and the skull, so it is trustworthy)
www.visitberlin.de/sites/defau…
I used the hip height to make an stimation for the size of the mount. It is very likely as long or longer than sue, or at least it gets very very close to it even if the animal is a lot more gracile, so it is impossible it matches her in mass. Tristan seems to be even more gracile than AMNH 5027, although it would be heavier than it due to much bigger linear dimensions.
However be cautious with the measurements provided by that image, the image is distorted by the angle and the camera lens. For it to be somewhat reliable, we would need a photograph taken from further away.
Also there is the fact that the mounts tail is bent inwards at the distal tip, although we can count the number of caudals after the benting and stimate their size for minimalizing this. Also i have better tools to measure the length than the ones i had back then, like the measure active path GIMP plugin that allows you to measure dinosaurs above the curves with an stunning accuracy.
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do you think you could measure along the curves on the spine of Tristan on the image i sent?
im not doubting or anything but a specimen longer than sue is certainly interesting.
it would be cool to see an exact number.
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I measured it.
First, the good news. My skull measurements (1,5-1,52m) are in (almost) perfect harmony with the hip height (3,63m) suggested on the image I sent. The skull yielded a metter patern of 290 pixels, and the hip height a metter pattern of 288 pixels, so we can conclude that both measurements are accurate, making tristan tall and having a big head.
Then the length over the curves: I drew the caudals from caudal 35 to caudal 47, and then measured over the curves. Depending on how many and how big the added caudals are and which metter pattern i use, I get between 12,05 and 12,20 meters long, which is not as long as Sue, sadly. But still a long specimen for a Rex.
However the image is still a bit deformed, so the results are not final. But still indicative of a big specimen. I must add that Tristan's age has been stimated to be 17 years old, so he had quite a bit of growth to do. Imagine how big he would have been if he had reached 28 or 30 years old.
This is the image: i64.tinypic.com/29279qu.jpg . For this one i used middle sized distal caudals and a 289 px meter pattern. So it can be a good to go number (12,14 m)
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some really good information and yea i suggest Tristan could reach 13m if it had a few more years of growth ,even it it was growing slowly .It would have been an impressive size as an ageing adult. The type specimens are big beasts ,esp amnh5027 ,which is clearly larger than tristan as iv been up close to them both and no question 5027 is overall larger and taller.
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thank you
we can (almost) be sure that Tristan was ~12.14 meters long and 7+ tonnes
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At least for now, until i get that damn book.
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That's 12.14 meters along the curves, right?
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