Photo of the Day #670: Giganotosaurus

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The skull of a restored Giganotosaurus skeleton (cast), photographed at the Maryland Science Center.


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The skull of a restored Tyrannosaurus skeleton (cast), photographed at the Maryland Science Center.
The skull of a restored Tarbosaurus skeleton (cast), photographed at the Maryland Science Center.
The skull of a restored Albertosaurus skeleton (cast), photographed at the Maryland Science Center.
As much as I love the mount of Barnum Brown's famous Tyrannosaurus skeleton at the AMNH, one of my absolute favorite reconstructions is the one pictured above from the Maryland Science Museum in Baltimore. While many Tyrannosaurus mounts have their heads high up in the air, perhaps even with jaws…

I remember being disappointed when Giganoto came along and knocked my favorite, T-rex, off it's pedestal as biggest theropod. But, even though Giganotosaurus, Spinosaurus, and some of the others may have been be bigger in absolute size, T-rex is still superior in some ways to these newer carnivores, such as having more powerful jaws, better eyesight, and a larger brain, so I'll console myself with that.

By Raymond Minton (not verified) on 13 Aug 2009 #permalink

I find it kind of ironic that T. rex, formerly renowned as THE badass bone-crushing, meat-rending, mindless killing machine, would now come to try to hang-on to its title as mightiest of the dinos (metaphorically speaking) on the strength of a bigger brain and superior intelligence!