Moros
Name: Moros
(ancient Greek for ‘impending doom’).
Phonetic: Mo-ross.
Named By: Lindsay E. Zanno, Ryan T. Tucker,
Aurore Canoville, Haviv M. Avrahami, Terry A. Gates &
Peter J. Makovicky - 2019.
Classification: Chordata, Reptilia, Dinosauria,
Saurischia, Theropoda, Tyrannosauroidea.
Species: M. intrepidus
(type).
Diet: Carnivore.
Size: Hind limb length estimated at 1.2 meters.
Total body size unknown.
Known locations: USA, Utah - Cedar Mountain
Formation.
Time period: Cenomanian of the Cretaceous.
Fossil representation: Partial hind leg bones.
Teeth. Holotype fossils are of a subadult.
Moros
is a genus of primitive tyrannosauroid
that lived in North America
during the earlier stages of the Late cretaceous. The holotype
fossils of Moros date from the Cenomanian of the
Cretaceous, meaning
that the discovery of these has turned back the clock on the first
known appearance of a definitive tyrannosaur in North America by a
further fifteen million years. With perhaps a grim sense of humour
the describers named this new genus Moros which is
ancient Greek for
impending doom’. A fitting name when you consider that later
tyrannosaurs would become the apex predators of North America.
Unfortunately
all we known at the time of writing about Moros are
some partial leg
and foot bones and some teeth. The leg length of Moros
has been
estimated by the genus describers to be about one hundred and twenty
centimetres long, but these fossil bones are also of a subadult
individual. Fully grown adults may have been slightly bigger, but
without further fossil discoveries we can only make a best guess at the
remainder of the body proportions.
Further reading
- Diminutive fleet-footed
tyrannosauroid narrows the 70-million-year gap in the North American
fossil record. - Communications Biology. 2 (1): 64 -
Lindsay E. Zanno, Ryan T. Tucker, Aurore Canoville, Haviv
M. Avrahami, Terry A. Gates & Peter J. Makovicky -
2019.
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