Today's post is about Alioramus Remotus because it has swag.
This dinosaur was a rather interesting one, since the only place I've ever heard of it was on the DINOSAUR ride at Walt Disney World. I checked all of my books, and only one of them had information on the creature, so here you are.
Alioramus Remotus was a Late Cretaceous theropod. A member of the Tyrannosaurid family, it was about 6 meters long and weighed about 500 kg. The name means "The other branch from a remote location" which is a reference to the dinosaur's genealogy. It was discovered in Mongolia and is thought to have been closely related to Tarbosaurus from more northern parts of Asia, hence "remote location." It was discovered by a Soviet expedition in the 1960s and was named by Dr. Sergei Kurzanov, which sounds like Raskolnikov, but I doubt there's any relation. Comrade Alioramus was named from a very fragmentary skeleton, only the skull was mostly in tact. They were able to name it from the skull thanks to it's uniqueness. The snout of the skull was covered by several bony protrusions- like the dinosaur version of Star Trek's Bajoran nose ridges. These ridges probably served an ornamental purpose and were probably rather delicate. Being a Soviet dinosaur it was big on communism, and would have probably met with much animosity in the largely capitalist world of Late Cretaceous Mongolia.
Don't worry, that crocodile was a capitalist
That about wraps up today's post. The next one will be about something else. Maybe Edmontosaurus.
- Athos
Long, John A., and Peter Schouten. Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
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