Tarbosaurus

What it was like

Tarbosaurus was a huge, bipedal meat eater with a massive skull, rows of large teeth, and tiny two-fingered arms. It grew to roughly 10 meters (33 feet) long, making it the largest predator known from its part of Asia.

Like other tyrannosaurids, it probably relied on strong jaws and keen senses to track and kill prey. Some paleontologists think Tarbosaurus was so similar to Tyrannosaurus that it may represent a population of the same genus from Asia, though most researchers still treat them as separate.

Its world

Tarbosaurus lived from about 72 to 66 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous, across what is now Mongolia and China. Most of its fossils come from the Nemegt Formation, with more scattered finds from the Beds of Nogon Tsav in Mongolia and the Qiupa, Subashi, and Yuliangzi formations in China.

It shared its floodplain habitat with other Nemegt animals such as the long-armed Deinocheirus, the slender Alioramus, the long-necked Nemegtosaurus, and the ostrich-like Gallimimus, as well as the plant-eating Saurolophus and the clawed Therizinosaurus.

How it was found

Maleev named Tarbosaurus in 1955, from bones found in Mongolia. Since then, paleontologists have recovered about 51 fossil finds of the genus, including skulls and skeletons, making it one of the better-known large predatory dinosaurs from Asia. It is considered a close relative of Tyrannosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, and other tyrannosaurids such as Daspletosaurus and Alioramus.