Tyrannotitan In Print

The description of the remaains of Tyrannotitan were concisely written and published in the May 2005 edition of Naturwssenschaften. The article is not available for free (or through my school's JSTOR) and I have, therefore, not been able to read it. The abstract is available, however, and describes Tyrannotitan as an older and basal form of the Carcharodontosauria. The poor condition of remains is pointed out by the team of researchers in almost an apologetic way, but it is not their fault at all that so little is known about the links between the three animals that are typically associated with one another (Tyrannotitan, Giganotosaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus). However, when considered a basal ancestor of Carcharodontosaurus, it does make some sense (though I cannot pull up the argument or final decision of the research team as to how it was related to Carcharodontosaurus) that it could have been a basal ancestor. One question this creates in my mind though is "How do we explain the reduction of forelimb leading into the family and then the subsequent need for that arm to adapt back into a slightly larger forelimb again?" Perhaps I will need to find the measurements of the forelimbs of the two to compare tomorrow so as to be able to discuss just how much the limb changed from one animal to the next. We can see in Tyrannotitan that the arm was of a modest, yet rather small, size:

© Natuurwissenschaften