The New Canadian T. rex: Tromerosaurus solumons

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Powers, M. J., Napoli, J. G., Coppock, C. C., Sharpe, H. S., Garros, C. W., Demers-Potvin, A. V., … Currie, P. J. (2026). A new albertosaurine from the Oldman Formation, Alberta, Canada, illuminates ambiguity between albertosaurine and tyrannosaurine characteristics. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. doi: 10.1080/02724634.2026.2728669

Meet Tromerosaurus solumons! The newest Tyrannosaurus rex relative from Alberta Canada. This 23 foot predator would have ruled its Cretaceous landscape, and is causing confusion in how paleontologists classify Tyrannosaurid dinosaurs.

Episode 353

Notes:

A new T-Rex relative was just discovered in Canada, and it could be bringing up some really good questions about how the different groups of tyrannosaurs are categorized. T-Rex is obviously the world's most famous dinosaur. You could argue against it, but you're wrong. That said, it had multiple giant, terrifying relatives, and also a whole bunch of slightly less giant, but also very terrifying relatives. Like this one, Tromerosaurus solumons, the brand new albertosaurine tyrannosaur from the Late Cretaceous Oldman Formation in Alberta, Canada. Yeah, Tromerosaurus, not quite as big as something like T-Rex, but it was still about 23 ft in length and couldn't have fit through a normal doorway if it really needed to. I mean, it is larger than animals like Nanotyrannus. But aside from its height and length, its measurements are a little weird and causing some issues. Cuz it has a mix of features from the two major groups of tyrannosaurids, the more gracile, lightly built albertosaurine tyrannosaurids, and the bulkier, heavier, kind of tank-like tyrannosaurine tyrannosaurids like T-Rex. One effect of this weird mix of features is it's placing it as most likely the earliest diverging member of albertosaurinae, which is potentially pushing back the split between albertosaurinae and tyrannosaurinae. Another cool result of its kind of weird measurements is that it means that these aren't the first Tromerosaurus fossils. There are fossils that were previously identified as Gorgosaurus, which given these new measurements, turned out to be Tromerosaurus. So aside from this being a really cool new Tyrannosaurus relative, it will probably have some longer-term consequences for how its relatives get categorized. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.