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Hi I found this and am wondering is this a new species of tyrannosaur I don’t think it’s albertosaurus libratus because it is in a collection with gorgosaurus libratus and albertosaurus sarcophagcus so if it was albertosaurus libratus there would not be any specimens named gorgosaurus libratus there are other specimens then just this tooth too any information? Thanks.

A9C52158-DE60-49AB-85C2-6B08AB461C3A.jpeg

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Two tyrannosaurids are known from Dinosaur Park Fm,  Daspletosaurus sp. and Gorgosaurus libratus.  Teeth are indistinguishable from one another and should be identified as "Tyrannosaurid indet"   I cannot comment on the tooth since the photo is to small.

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This is the best image it also came from a maxila 

31E6AB8C-FF57-4015-9BCE-87022798ED23.jpeg

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Where is the image from?

    Tim    VETERAN SHALE SPLITTER

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Sorry troodon but I don’t know the scale

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If its catalogued by the RTMP as a Tyrannosaurid that what it is.   So these isolated teeth from DPF are "Tyrannosaurid indet." and cannot be assigned to a genus/species.  It was cataloged back in 1993 when little was know about tyrannosaurids. Albertosaurus is only known from very late campanian early maastrichtian deposits of the Horseshoe Canyon Fm

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But also if you read the info on it it says it’s a albertosaurus but no albertosaurus have been found in the dinosaur park formation only gorgosaurus libratus and daspletosaurus and also they have a maxila and some other fossils of albertosaurus from the dinosaur park formation 

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But also troodon there are ones cataloged in 2012 too

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Ummmmm wellll.......in 1884 or 1889 ( I’ve seen 2 dates) Joseph b tyrell discover a skull in the area that later became dinosaur provincial park. The skull was named albertosaurus. The specimen is now housed in the royal tyrell museum... there are numerous references to it but for some reason it’s left off their main list...

The following from thier website.

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It appears to be a synonym.  This paper uses the name: Albertosaurus libratus

 

Ryan, M.J., Russell, A.P., Eberth, D.A., Currie, P.J. 2001

The Taphonomy of a Centrosaurus (Ornithischia: Certopsidae) bone bed from the Dinosaur Park Formation

(Upper Campanian), Alberta, Canada, with comments on cranial ontogeny. Palaios, 16(5):482-506

 

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That is not the current understanding of Tyrannosaurids in Alberta, which I have stated several times.

In western Canada these tyrannosaurid taxa are temporally separated:
G. libratus and D. torosus are reported from deposits that are middle to late Campanian in age Dinosaur Park Fm, whereas A. sarcophagus is reported from late Campanian to Maastrichtian deposits the Horseshoe Canyon Fm.  

 

 

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1 hour ago, Troodon said:

That is not the current understanding of Tyrannosaurids in Alberta, which I have stated several times.

 

 

Yes, I understand that the recent literature (Dinosauria 2nd ed. etc.) says it is Gorgosaurus libratus

The literature is confusing for the OP ..so it is useful to show the earlier placement in Albertosaurus.

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Yeah there is gorgosaurus libratus In the collection too so it can’t be albertosaurus libratus or sarcophagcus maybe a new species from the dinosaur park formation a earlier species because they have been finding these albertosaurus in the dinosaur park formation from 1889 to today 

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I've stated this before isolated teeth in the collection or anywhere cannot be assigned to a specific tyrannosaurid species.   Studies ( Currie, Powell & Hill 2005) have shown you cannot distinguish between tyrannosaurid of smaller teeth).    So any assignment of isolated teeth to a specific genus/species were not accurate.

 

Link

 

 

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But troodon they have a maxila and some other bones that are labeled albertosaurus from the dinosaur park formation it not just teeth 

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So they can tell that it’s a albertosaurus because of the Maxila and the other bones the teeth can be labeled tyrannosaur indet unless there attached to a skull but the rest they can tell there a albertosaurus because of the differences between gorgosaurus and albertosaurus fossils so is this a new species?

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The original Albertosaurus sarcophagus fossil collected by J.B. Tyrrell and T.C. Weston in 1884 was from a locality called Kneehills Creek, in the Drumheller area just north of Midland Provincial Park, about 150 km NW of Dinosaur Provincial Park (https://paleobiodb.org/classic/basicCollectionSearch?collection_no=11901&is_real_user=1). As has already been established, this is from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, which was 5-7 million years younger than the Dinosaur Park Formation (give or take). Gorgosaurus libratus was named by Lawrence Lambe in 1914 from material collected just outside of Dinosaur Provincial Park. In 1970, Dale Russell concluded that Gorgosaurus and Albertosaurus were the same genus, creating the new combination Albertosaurus libratus for the Gorgosaurus material. This was in general use for the next 25-30 years; that's what it was generally called when I got into palaeontology, and if, as Troodon pointed out, this material was catalogued in 1993, it's not surprising that the name Albertosaurus libratus would be used.

 

in 2003, Philip Currie recognized that Gorgosaurus libratus was much more distinct from Albertosaurus sarcophagus than previously thought, and so subsequently this species has been referred to as Gorgosaurus (being both anatomically and stratigraphically distinct from Albertosaurus).

 

However, from my own personal experience at least, museum catalogues can be notoriously slow to update their taxonomy (I seem to recall a number of years ago the American Museum of Natural History was using some old names to identify specimens in its collections). Furthermore, updates may be done by staff or volunteers who may not specialize in the species they're cataloging, and so might retain old (and incorrect) taxonomic assignments. So I think that's the most likely explanation of what's going on here, the catalogue is just using taxonomy that isn't current. It's not indicating that this is a new or unpublished record of Albertosaurus that might represent a new species.

 

Does that mean it's definitely not a new species? No, technically that can't be absolutely ruled out. But as Troodon mentioned, Tyrannosaur teeth in the Dinosaur Provincial Park formation can't be identified at the species level, so his assessment of this tooth would be correct. As for the other material from Dinosaur Park you mentioned, I think the simplest explanation here is it's just a case of the catalogue using an old name.

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But also Arion some of the material was found in 2012 and by then gorgosaurus was not classified as albertosaurus libratus because it became its own genus and species again in 2003.

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1 hour ago, dinosaur man said:

But also Arion some of the material was found in 2012 and by then gorgosaurus was not classified as albertosaurus libratus because it became its own genus and species again in 2003.

I hear you; but again, my take is that this is just a case of using the wrong name for something. Consider a couple of other examples from their catalogue.

 

TMP 1997.143.0042, a tooth from the Dinosaur Park Formation is identified as Tyrannosaurus (https://hermis.alberta.ca/rtmp/Details.aspx?ObjectID=TMP1997.143.0042&dv=True). If that identification were accurate, this would be the oldest record of Tyrannosaurus by about 8 million years. (Technically not impossible, but it would be an extreme outlier for a species that's as well-represented as Tyrannosaurus to disappear from the fossil record for 8 million years; further, I suspect that someone more knowledgeable about Tyrannosaur teeth than myself would conclude the tooth pictured on that page is not Tyrannosaurus, which as I understand it has fairly distinct teeth).

Also, consider the specimens collected in the 1980s that are identified as Trachodon (https://hermis.alberta.ca/rtmp/Search.aspx?ad=True&st=Trachodon&tid=-1&sc=Genus), a name that hasn't been used for Hadrosaurid material for decades.

Or a vertebra collected in 2013 from Montana identified as Hadrosaurus (https://hermis.alberta.ca/rtmp/Details.aspx?ObjectID=TMP2013.017.0010&dv=True), even though Hadrosaurus is only known from eastern North America. (That's actually a strange identification for something from the Hell Creek Formation; I know a little while ago there were a few people who classified Gryposaurid material from western North America as Hadrosaurus, but none of that was as young as the Hell Creek material, and even without seeing it I'm 90% sure this is actually Edmontosaurus).

 

So what I'm trying to say is the identifications given in online museum catalogues shouldn't always be trusted as the final word. From what I could see of the more recent Albertosaurus specimens you were referring to, there were a few teeth and unidentified material from 2010 that were listed as Albertosaurus from the Dinosaur Park Formation (maybe something else I missed also, there were over 130 pages of Albertosaurus specimens and I didn't look at each page haha). None of them had associated photographs, which to me says that photographing those specimens was not a high priority for some reason (i.e., they may not be very good quality and certainly not something you'd base a new species off of).

 

My impression continues to be that this is simply a case of human error or someone with outdated opinions of Tyrannosaurid nomenclature. However, if you're still really intrigued by these specimens, you might ask the museum about them. I had a nice email exchange a few years ago with one of their collections assistants about some Stegoceras domes, and he was nice enough to send me some pictures of specimens that I'd never seen before, and generally was quite helpful.

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The only two recorded Tyrannosaurids from DPF are Gorgosaurus and Daspletosaurus sp.  It's unlikely a third species exists but never say never, who knows.

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Thanks and I will ask the RTMP I will tell you what they say.

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