Life Through Geologic Time

Tarbosaurus bataar

Tarbosaurus (Alarming Lizard) was a large tyrannosaurid theropod, and has been in the news lately because of an auction in New York this past May, most sources calling it Tyrannosaurus bataar, because the media isn’t too bright. It was seized by the feds. There have been a number of species named, but the only species currently recognized is T. bataar.

Tarbosaurus roamed Asia in the late Cretaceous. It has been found mostly in Mongolia, with some remains recovered in China. Like most Tyrannosaurids, T. bataar was a large bipedal carnivore, however, it had a unique locking mechanism in its lower jaw, and the smallest forelimbs to body size of all Tyrannosaurids. It was the apex predator of its environment, which was humid floodplains, crossed with rivers. It is a prevalent creature in the fossil record, and, as such, has been well studied. It grew from ~10-~12 meters long, weighed about 6 tonnes, and about 3 meters tall (I think, I could use some verification.) 

Photo:

By Armel (Dinosaure  Uploaded by FunkMonk) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Drawing:

DiBgd at the English language Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons