Hairy Museum of Natural History

Congratulations to Drs. Carr & Williamson on the publication of “The Bisti Beast,” whose description is the cover story in this month’s Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

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  Bistahieversor sealeyi
  Image by Mary Sundstrom and myself, for the
  New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

• New Dinosaur: Bistahieversor sealeyi
• Pronounced: bis-tah-he-ee-VER-sor SEE-lee-eye
• Name means: Sealey’s Bisti destroyer (Paul Sealey discovered the fossils in the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness Area)
• Named by: Carr and Williamson 2010
• Relations: Tyrannosauroid, a group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and its not-too-distant relatives
• Location: Northwest New Mexico, United States of America
• Age: Late Cretaceous (Campanian), ~73,000,000 years old
• Length: ~9 meters (29 feet)
• Info: Two fairly complete skeletons of a new type of New Mexican dinosaur are helping to fill in gaps in the evolution and distribution of tyrannosauroids, the group of dinosaurs that includes T. rex and its fairly close relatives.
• Tyrannosauroid fossils have been known from southwestern North America for over 100 years, but mostly in bits and pieces—isolated bones and teeth or, at best, incomplete skeletons of uncertain identity (see Carr & Williamson 2000 for a good overview). Traditionally, researchers have assigned these fossils to well-known tyrannosauroid genera like Albertosaurus or Daspletosaurus, whose more complete remains were originally found further north in Wyoming, Montana, and Alberta.
• Thanks to recent discoveries, the southwest now has a tyrannosaur all its own. Bistahieversor is the new name given to a complete skull and (mostly unprepared) skeleton from the Bisti badlands of northwestern New Mexico. Its skull and jaws display a healthy list of detailed anatomical characters that distinguish it from all other tyrannosauroids, including a complex joint between the nasal and frontal bones on top of its skull, and a unique hole above its eye. Other tyrannosaur remains from northwest New Mexico, including the partial skull and skeleton of a juvenile, appear to be specimens of Bistahieversor as well.
• Images:
  NMMNH P-27469, holotype skull and jaw of Bistahieversor sealeyi
  Photograph by David Baccadutre, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

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  NMMNH P-25049, incomplete skull and skeleton of juvenile Bistahieversor sealeyi
  Both these specimens are on display in the New Mexico’s Seacoast hall of the NMMNHS.

• Main Reference: Carr, Thomas D. and Williamson, Thomas E., 2010 Bistahieversor sealeyi, gen. et sp. nov., a new tyrannosauroid from New Mexico and the origin of deep snouts in Tyrannosauroidea. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, vol. 30 (1), pp. 1–16. doi: 10.1080/02724630903413032
• Additional Reference: Carr, Thomas D. and Williamson, Thomas E., 2000 A review of Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria, Coelurosauria) from New Mexico. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 17, pp. 113–145.
• Elsewhere on the web:
  • Dinochick Blogs: Williamson and Carr introduce the destroyer – Bistahieversor sealeyi: Part 1 Part 2
  • Theropoda: Il Distruttore di Bisti (Carr & Williamson 2010) [english]
  • SVP & Paleo News: PRESS RELEASE – New Species of Tyrannosaur Discovered in Southwestern U.S.
  • National Geographic News: New “Destroyer” Dinosaur Found, was T. rex Relative
  • Brett Booth reconstructed Bistahieversor for Draw a Dinosaur Day

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Cretaceous, Dinosaurs.