Alectrosaurus Gilmore, 1933
Alectrosaurus Gilmore, 1933
(Bull. Amer. Mus. nat. Hist., 67, 35.
NcZ) "mateless lizard"
a-LEK-tro-SAWR-us (Gr. alektros "unbedded, unmarried" [by extension,
"alone, unrelated"] + Gr. sauros "lizard") (m) referring to the supposed complete taxonomic
distinctness of a new theropod dinosaur from "deinodonts" [tyrannosaurs],
the typical large carnivorous dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous. Gilmore (1933) says:
"The unusually large size of the humerus and the enormously long claws are so unlike any known
Upper Cretaceous deinodont as to at once set the animal off as a new type of theropod dinosaur.
The name Alectrosaurus olseni is therefore proposed for its reception."
While most of the incomplete skeletal material originally described by Gilmore (hindlimb, pubis)
belongs to a small to medium-sized (5-6 meters (16-20 ft.)) tyrannosaurid,
the large clawed forelimbs that inspired the name are now thought (Perle, 1977;
Mader and Bradley, 1989) to come from an unidentified segnosaur,
a type of plant-eating theropod with very large clawed forelimbs.
Perle attributed additional material to the genus in 1977; Alectrosaurus would have had
relatively small forelimbs like typical tyrannosaurids.
(The unusual name Alectrosaurus is NOT derived from Greek alektor "rooster"
and does NOT mean "rooster lizard" or "eagle lizard" as stated in some sources.)
Type species: Alectrosaurus olseni [OL-sen-ie], for George Olsen of the American Museum
of Natural History, who collected the original specimens at Iren Dabasu, Inner Mongolia.
Theropoda Coelurosauria Tyrannosauridae L. Cret. CAs.
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