16 Facts About Gorgosaurus

Gorgosaurus was most closely related to Albertosaurus, and more distantly related to the larger Tyrannosaurus.

Gorgosaurus lived in a lush floodplain environment along the edge of an inland sea.

In some areas, Gorgosaurus coexisted with another tyrannosaurid, Daspletosaurus torosus.

Gorgosaurus is the best-represented tyrannosaurid in the fossil record, known from dozens of specimens.

Gorgosaurus libratus was first described by Lawrence Lambe in 1914.

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Holotype of Gorgosaurus libratus is a nearly complete skeleton associated with a skull, discovered in 1913 by Charles M Sternberg.

Gorgosaurus was smaller than Tyrannosaurus or Tarbosaurus, closer in size to Albertosaurus and Daspletosaurus.

Gorgosaurus shared its general body plan with all other tyrannosaurids.

Gorgosaurus had four digits on each hindlimb, including a small first toe which did not contact the ground.

Gorgosaurus is classified in the theropod subfamily Albertosaurinae within the family Tyrannosauridae.

Gorgosaurus libratus was formally reassigned to Albertosaurus by Dale Russell in 1970, and many subsequent authors followed his lead.

Gregory S Paul has suggested that Gorgosaurus libratus is ancestral to Albertosaurus sarcophagus.

Gorgosaurus spent as much as half its life in the juvenile phase before ballooning up to near-maximum size in only a few years.

Discovery of two exceptionally preserved juvenile skulls from Gorgosaurus suggests that Gorgosaurus underwent the morphological shift from gracile juveniles to robust adults at an earlier age than Tyrannosaurus, two which it was compared in a study published by Jared Voris et al.

In 1970, Dale Russell hypothesized that the more common Gorgosaurus actively hunted fleet-footed hadrosaurs, while the rarer and more troublesome ceratopsians and ankylosaurians were left to the more heavy built Daspletosaurus.

However, Gorgosaurus appears more common in northern formations like Dinosaur Park, with species of Daspletosaurus being more abundant to the south.