An American Tyrant in London, Collector's Edition

I’m overloaded with work and deadlines, and unable to complete anything new. So please enjoy this classic Tet Zoo article from the archives, originally published at ver 2 back in 2008 (an archived version is here)…

Caption: Dynamosaurus imperiosus wasn’t named for great material, namely an incomplete mandible with teeth, some cervical and dorsal vertebrae, and parts of the pelvis and hindlimb. This was originally accessioned at the AMNH in New York as AMNH 5866, but was relabelled BMNH R7994 when it joined the collections of the NHM London in 1960. The mandible has, on occasion, been on display: here it is in December 2016 (without flash above, with flash below). Images: Darren Naish.

When Tyrannosaurus rex was named by Henry Osborn in 1905, it was described alongside a second gigantic theropod, the armour-plated, Ceratosaurus-like Dynamosaurus imperiosus, collected in 1900 near the Cheyenne River, Wyoming. Unlike T. rex, Dynamosaurus possessed irregularly shaped bony plates on its back and sides. These later turned out to be from an ankylosaurid (probably Ankylosaurus), and in fact small craters on the scutes look like T. rex tooth marks, suggesting that the scutes were part of the tyrannosaur’s stomach contents* (Carpenter 2004, Breithaupt et al. 2008a, b). Osborn later realised that Dynamosaurus was synonymous with T. rex, but continued to think that the animal possessed armour plates (Osborn 1917).

* Ankylosaurid armour may well have helped protect these animals from tyrannosaurid predators, but the awesome bite strengths reconstructed for T. rex suggest that the biggest tyrants might still have been able to do serious, fatal damage to an ankylosaurid. Scott Hartman once depicted this in a reconstruction titled ‘Armor? What armor?’.

Caption: there aren’t that many colour photos of the NHM T. rex mount, but this one has been reproduced in several popular books. Note that the specimen is a half panel-mount, the skull, much of the ribcage and various of the other elements being reproductions (made of fibreglass, I think). The whole thing adheres to an environmental painting. The gallery held several of these and I don’t know anything about their history, not have I seen good, complete versions of them. Thanks to Jim Robins for sourcing this picture in the first place. Image: NHM archives.

In 1960 the Dynamosaurus specimen was (together with parts of three other T. rex specimens) sold to the then British Museum (Natural History), and here it was mounted in the museum’s old dinosaur gallery in a rather ‘modern’ pose: that is, with its body and tail near-horizontal and its tail well up off the ground. Those who’ve commented on this have usually noted that the museum’s Barney Newman deliberately chose to depict the animal in this way. Indeed, Newman (1970) explained how correct articulation of the vertebrae meant that the animal simply had to be arranged like this.

Caption: Erwin S. Christman’s illustration of the vertebral column and pelvis of T. rex, as understood at the time (from Osborn 1917). This depicts AMNH 5027, the T. rex specimen discovered by Barnum Brown in 1908, later described by Henry Osborn, and today on show in the AMNH Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs. It was remounted in a horizontal pose in 1996.

Newman was not, actually, the first person to depict a tyrant dinosaur in a horizontal-bodied posture. Erwin S. Christman illustrated the T. rex back and tail in horizontal pose for Osborn’s 1917 paper on theropods (Osborn 1917), and one might conclude from this that Christman (and perhaps Osborn too) actually advocated a wholly ‘modern’ posture for tyrant dinosaurs. In, however, an earlier paper, Osborn (1913) had drawn attention to Christman’s on-going work on reconstructing the life postures of theropods, and it seems from words used here that Christman imagined theropods to walk with their backs held diagonally, their tails sloping down to the ground. Various dinosaur reconstructions supervised by Osborn during the 1920s are depicted this way too, so I think that Osborn regarded bipedal dinosaurs as ‘diagonal-bodied’, not ‘horizontal-bodied’.

Newman (1970) noted that Ned Colbert had depicted other large theropods (Allosaurus and Gorgosaurus) in horizontal postures in his 1965 book The Age of Reptiles, and I think that what Newman was referring to here are Margaret Colbert’s life reconstructions of these animals. They indeed show horizontal-bodied big theropods in a book of 1965.

Caption: Margaret Colbert’s 1965 reconstruction of a Late Cretaceous ‘Belly River’ scene in western Canada, showing the tyrannosaurid Gorgosaurus at left. There might be amphibious lambeosaurines and tail-dragging ankylosaurids here, but the theropod is fairly modern in appearance. Presumably the Colberts (both Ned and Margaret) imagined theropods to walk or run with raised tails and mostly horizontal bodies, and evidence from published statements implies that many workers thought this through the 20th century. Image: Margaret Colbert, from Colbert (1965).

So, was Newman’s tyrannosaur mount as far-sighted and innovative as might appear? It soon entered the ‘mainstream’ literature. Halstead (1975), for example, illustrated T. rex in the postures depicted by Newman, also repeating Newman’s idea that tyrannosaurs might have used their short didactyl forelimbs as props when raising themselves from a resting posture. But Newman’s ideas weren’t entirely modern. He thought that the tail must have swung far to the side with each step, and that these dinosaurs must have walked with an “ungainly waddling” rather “than the formerly postulated majestic striding” (p. 123). Modern work has not supported this idea, which never seemed reasonable anyway.

Caption: Newman (1970) illustrated T. rex lying on the ground, and then showed how it might have used its forelimbs as props and an upward throw of its head to raise itself up and stand. This image is the fourth in the sequence. The animal isn’t fully horizontal, what with a diagonally sloping tail. The overly flexed (curled) look of the left foot is probably outside the range of what was possible, the forelimb is disarticulated at the shoulder joint, and the neck is likely too erect relative to what was normal. Versions of this diagram appeared in several popular dinosaur books of the 1970s and 80s.

What interests me in particular is Alan Charig’s claim that the BM(NH) T. rex “was mounted with its body in a far too horizontal position: this was done because it would otherwise have been too tall for the Gallery. Newman, who made the mount, has attempted to rationalise this (1970) by stating that the posture was much more bird-like than is suggested by earlier mounts” (Charig 1972, p. 137). Charig and Newman were at loggerheads, and this exchange on the posture of the BM(NH) T. rex “did nothing to improve relations between the two” (Moody & Naish 2010). But, personal spats aside, this must mean that Charig regarded Newman’s re-posed T. rex to be too horizontal, that Charig wanted it to be more upright. Maybe not bolt upright like a standing kangaroo, but more diagonally posed, at least.

Whatever the true explanation behind the posture of the London T. rex, I remain upset that I never got to see it. And I’ve decided that I want this article to serve as a repository for images of that now lost mount, so I’ll be adding additional pictures of it here, as I find them. Thanks if you know of any that aren’t already shared here.

Caption: another image of the NHM’s old T. rex mount, but a poor, black and white one. I’ve lost track of its source! Note the small chain-link fence at the bottom of the photo, this showing that it was taken at a different time from the other black and white picture here.

Caption: at left, colour image from Michael Benton’s 1984 Pocket Dinosaurs (though this is the 1987 edition), showing the T. rex in the background. This photo confirms that the half skull used in the panel mount is wholly separate from the complete skull replica housed in the case (I knew that already, because the half skull is kept in the collections while the complete skull is on show in the galleries). At right, a black and white photo from Michael Tweedie’s 1977 The World of the Dinosaur. The accompanying caption states that “The skeleton is displayed in the animal’s most probable standing posture against a background of Upper Cretaceous scenery”, and thus includes obvious reference to Newman (1970).

Caption: another colour version, but this time composited such that the skeleton is stepping out of the original and overlapping the adjacent sections of the book. This is from Michael Benton’s 1993 Dinosaurs: Living Monsters of the Past, a valuable compendium of unusual and rarely reproduced pictures. It includes another view of the gallery, this time the Diplodocus side.

Caption: the credits to the 1982 Longman Group children's documentary Dinosaurs: Fun, Fact & Fantasy include this view of the mount in side view. Thanks to Brian Choo for reminding me about this.

For previous Tet Zoo articles on tyrannosauroids and related issues, see…

Huge thanks as ever to everyone who supports me and what I do at patreon. That funding allows me to make time for this blog, and for the technical research I publish on the side. Click here to join the collective and see unpublished work as it comes together.

Refs - -

Breithaupt, B. H., Southwell, E. H. & Matthews, N. A. 2008a. The ‘powerful imperial lizard’ Dynamosaurus imperiosus: the world’s first Tyrannosaurus rex comes to London. In Moody, D., Buffetaut, E., Martill, D. & Naish, D. (eds) Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective. The Geological Society of London (London), pp. 22-23.

Breithaupt, B. H., Southwell, E. H. & Matthews, N. A. 2008b. Wyoming’s Dynamosaurus imperiosus and other discoveries of Tyrannosaurus rex in the Rocky Mountain West. In Larson, P. & Carpenter, K. (eds). Tyrannosaurus rex: the Tyrant King. Indiana University Press (Bloomington and Indianapolis), pp. 57-61.

Carpenter, K. 2004. Redescription of Ankylosaurus magniventris Brown 1908 (Ankylosauridae) from the Upper Cretaceous of the Western Interior of North America. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 41, 961-986.

Charig, A. J. 1972. The evolution of the archosaur pelvis and hind-limb: an explanation in functional terms. In Joysey, K. A. & Kemp, T. S. (eds) Studies in Vertebrate Evolution. Oliver & Boyd (Edinburgh), pp. 121-155.

Colbert, E. H. 1965. The Age of Reptiles. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.

Halstead, L. B. 1975. The Evolution and Ecology of the Dinosaurs. Peter Lowe, London.

Moody, R. T. J. & Naish, D. 2010. Alan Jack Charig (1927-1997): an overview of his academic accomplishments and role in the world of fossil reptile research. In Moody, R. T. J., Buffetaut, E., Naish, D. & Martill, D. M. (eds) Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: A Historical Perspective. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 343, pp. 89-109.

Newman, B. H. 1970. Stance and gait in the flesh-eating dinosaur Tyrannosaurus. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 2, 119-123.

Osborn, H. F. 1913. Tyrannosaurus, restoration and model of the skeleton. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 32, 91-92.

Osborn, H. F. 1917. Skeletal adaptations of Ornitholestes, Struthiomimus, Tyrannosaurus. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 32, 133-150.