Alectrosaurus
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| Alectrosaurus Conservation status: Fossil Late Cretaceous (Early Cenomanian) | ||||||||||||||
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A. olseni (type) | ||||||||||||||
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Iren Dabasu Formation, Inner Mongolia |
Alectrosaurus (ah-LEK-tro-sawr-us) meaning “alone lizard”, because it was unlike any other Asian carnivore known at the time (Greek alektros = alone + sauros = lizard) is a small tyrannosaurid known from the Late Cretaceous of Inner Mongolia. The name of the type species honours George Olsen, who discovered the first specimens. It is incompletely known from material found in 1923 during the 3rd AMNH expedition to Mongolia. The original description by Charles Gilmore (1933) characterized Alectrosaurus as a long-armed theropod, but this is due to the mistaken association of segnosaur elements (Mader & Bradley, 1989). The hindlimb material represents a true tyrannosauroid which Gilmore described as closely resembling Gorgosaurus and about the same size as G. sternbergi. The femur, tibia, and foot of Alectrosaurus are all approximately the same length, and the third toe is short relative to the third metatarsal, when compared to other tyrannosaurs. Gregory Paul (1988) suggested that A. olseni may potentially be referred to the genus Albertosaurus, but there is presently little confidence in restoring the relationships of Alectrosaurus to other tyrannosaurids. It may be basal to the divergence of Albertosaurinae and Tyrannosaurinae (Holtz 2001).
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