Comments on: You Say Tyrannosaurus, I Say Tarbosaurus

By: Mark Robinson

Mark Robinson — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 03:56:39 +0000

@Zach – The former is an altogether more powerful, heavily-built animal. The differences in habitat are important as well.

Those two sentences could equally apply to tigers and leopards, both Panthera.

By: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:16:10 +0000

Zach: actually, Homo has priority. And indeed the "ape" (a mishmash of chimpanzee and ourangutan information) was originally called Homo troglodytes in Linnaeus.

By: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:35:57 +0000

Tvrtko, don’t blame us for the misspelling: blame Maleev. We are stuck with the “bataar” because that is how Maleev spelled it in 1955.

By: Zach Miller

Zach Miller — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:13:25 +0000

I don’t know how good the chimp/human analogy is. There are a good number of important skeletal differences between humans and chimpanzees. I think old ideas about renaming us “Pan sapians” are more making a point than suggesting actual taxonomy.

Even so, I support a generic separation between Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus. The former is an altogether more powerful, heavily-built animal. The differences in habitat are important as well. I would argue that there are just as many (if not more) similarities between Tyrannosaurus and Daspletosaurus than between Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus. But I’ve been wrong before.

By: Thomas Carr

Thomas Carr — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:12:47 +0000

Tvrtko, (1) by the conventions of taxonomy we are stuck with Maleev’s misspelling of T. bataar; and (2) arguably the Homo-Pan argument is a false analogy, even when the plethora of extinct species of Homo is not considered.

By: Tvrtko Samardžija

Tvrtko Samardžija — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:13:37 +0000

Brian, I support you calling the dinosaur Tarbosaurus. I mean, let’s be fair, us and chimpanzees are as close relatives as are the “tyrant lizard king” and “alarming lizard hero” (Guys, all of you misspelled the Mongolian word for ‘hero’ – baatar – with the first ‘a’ doubled, not the second). Therefore, the choices are two: (i) we should call those two Tarbosaurus baatar and Tyrannosaurus rex, or (ii) we should either call ourselves Pan sapiens or the chimpanzees Homo troglodytes. Or we could just call all of the Hominidae members (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, us, etc.) simply Homo. That’d be a lot simpler!

By: Ann

Ann — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 17:33:04 +0000

Rest assured that the other fossils at the Heritage auction did not go unnoticed

By: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:33:50 +0000

To be fair, the Mongolian species was first named Tyrannosaurus bataar. A smaller specimen named the same year (1955) was given the name Tarbosaurus efremovi: eventually it was realized that these two (and some other) specimens were all one growth series, and put together as "bataar". Also, most recent analyses place Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus bataar as each others' closest relatives, so this is more a matter of "taste" (or at least "broadness of genus definition") as anything else. Thomas Carr--probably the best tyrannosaur anatomist on the planet [but don't let him hear that, or he might get embarrassed...]--is generally comfortable with including bataar in Tyrannosauus. And in some publications in the 1990s I did the same. But I agree with the consensus of opinions here in this case: almost certainly this attempted sale of the specimen used the Tyrannosaurus name for marketing rather than scientific purposes.

By: Kyle Freeman

Kyle Freeman — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:17:02 +0000

I definitely think that you and Victoria are correct that it should be Tarbosaurus. Though I understand why the name Tyrannosaurus has been used both by the auctioneers and the media as the name is likely to attract more attention both from a sales and ratings point of view than Tarbosaurus is.

By: Thomas Carr

Thomas Carr — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 14:49:40 +0000

Brian, I follow Maleev (1955) in his use of Tyrannosaurus bataar because T. rex and T. bataar are sister species. To use different generic names implies a distance in relationship and morphology that does not exist. I think that names must retain phylogenetic content, so I will not use “Tarbosaurus” unless it can be shown they are not each other’s closest relatives.
Sincerely, Thomas D. Carr