Tyrannosaur

tyrannosaur

Any of a group of related predatory dinosaurs with large, high skulls, powerful jaws and legs, and large, sharp teeth shaped for biting through flesh and bone. Tyrannosaurus rex is the largest and best-known, found as fossils in North American deposits from the latest part of the Cretaceous Period (about 65 million years ago). Tyrannosaurs walked with the body horizontal and the long tail held off the ground as a counterweight. In that posture, large adults, weighing more than six tons, would have been more than 40 ft (12 m) long. In some forms the hands had only two digits. A nearly complete skeleton of T. rex called “Sue” is on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Other tyrannosaurs include Albertosaurus and Tarbosaurus.

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tyrannosaurus, tyrannosaur

any large carnivorous bipedal dinosaur of the genus Tyrannosaurus, common in North America in upper Jurassic and Cretaceous times: suborder Theropoda (theropods)

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Tyrannosaur [tə′ran·ə‚sȯr]

(pateontology)

A large carnivorous therapod dinosaur 40 feet (12 meters) long and weighing 6 tons, from the Late Cretaceous Period that had powerful hindlimbs, short forelimbs, a large skull (4 feet long), and very powerful jaws.