Re: Paranychodon questions

[Dinogeorge <Dinogeorge@aol.com>]

In a message dated 98-03-18 02:50:32 EST, bh162@scn.org writes:

<< The Eagle Sandstone is a Campanian-age marine beach facies and
 marine offshore dune facies formation.  Unfortunately, the
 authors don't go into any detail on exactly what the
 tyrannosaur element(s) is/are.
  
 
 Also listed as occuring in this marine formation is a taxon
 called "Ornithomimus" grandis.  No teeth there!
  >>

Here's a relevant paragraph ripped from my Japanese-language article for
Gakken on tyrannosaurids:

        Although Cope described the first-known tyrannosaurid skulls, it was 
Marsh
who described the first tyrannosaurid species whose type specimen is skeletal.
In his 1890 paper introducing the strange new "bird mimic" dinosaurs,
Ornithomimidae, Marsh erected the species Ornithomimus grandis for a 60-cm-
long third metatarsal bone that resembled but was much larger than the
corresponding foot bone of the type species Ornithomimus velox. It was
discovered by John Bell Hatcher in 1888 along the east side of Cow Creek in
Fergus County, Montana, in the Eagle Sandstone, a formation geologically
earlier than the Judith River formation where Cope had made so many
discoveries. Here again, Marsh did not know it, but the Ornithomimus grandis
foot bone actually belonged to a tyrannosaurid. Like the third metatarsal of
ornithomimids, the third metatarsal of tyrannosaurids is "pinched" at the top:
squeezed together by the metatarsals on either side, just below the ankle.
(This is the birdlike part of the anatomy that Marsh had in mind when he
coined the term Ornithomimidae.) Marsh did not illustrate it, and somehow when
portions of Marsh's collection were transferred to the Smithsonian
Institution, the bone was lost. Later (in 1905), Hatcher, in writing about the
find, mentioned that there were "fragments representing a considerable portion
of a skeleton," but these have never been described.