Pronunciation: die-NAM-o-TEH-ruh
Meaning: Powerful terror
Author/s: McDonald et al. (2018)
Synonyms: None known
First Discovery: New Mexico, USA
Acta Ordinal: #1002
Dynamoterror dynastes
Way back in 1900, Barnum Brown discovered the partial skeleton of a massive carnivorous dinosaur at Wyoming's Seven Mile Creek and carted it back to the American Museum of Natural History for study. It was named Dynamosaurus imperiosus. In 1902, the same Mr Brown found another colossal carnivore, this time at Montana's Hell Creek, stuck fast in hard-as-nails sandstone. It was named Tyrannosaurus rex. Henry Fairfield Osborn announced both critters in the same 1905 paper, despite the latter being discovered two years later, consisting of fewer fossils and refusing to budge from the ground at that point.
But when further preparation and study the following year revealed the pair as two specimens of the same type, Tyrannosaurus claimed priority, naming rights, and an eternity of media attention because its brief description appeared a single page earlier, while Dynamosaurus drifted into the mists of time.
Some might argue that "page priority" is not a consistent concept. If it were, then Manospondylus gigas should've trumped Tyrannosaurus because it was described by Edward Drinker Cope a full 13 years' worth of pages earlier, but by the by. Andrew McDonald was so distraught at the loss of Dynamosaurus—his favourite childhood dinosaur, which would make him at least 112 years old—that he named Dynamoterror dynastes in its honour in 2018.
Some might argue that "page priority" is not a consistent concept. If it were, then Manospondylus gigas should've trumped Tyrannosaurus because it was described by Edward Drinker Cope a full 13 years' worth of pages earlier, but by the by. Andrew McDonald was so distraught at the loss of Dynamosaurus—his favourite childhood dinosaur, which would make him at least 112 years old—that he named Dynamoterror dynastes in its honour in 2018.
(Powerful terror ruler)Etymology
Dynamoterror is derived from the Greek "dynamis" (power) and the Latin word "terror". The species epithet, dynastes, means "ruler" in Latin. The intended binomen is "powerful terror ruler" and honours "Dynamosaurus imperiosus" (Osborn, 1905), which is a junior synonym of Tyrannosaurus rex (Osborn, 1905).
ZooBank registry: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:EED48535-DC9C-4E4A-A5BB-1ACA1D5FD918.
Discovery
The remains of Dynamoterror were discovered in the Juans Lake Beds in the upper Allison Member of the Menefee Formation, San Juan Basin, northwestern New Mexico, by Eric Gutierrez and Brian Watkins in August of 2012.
The holotype (UMNH VP 28348) is an incomplete associated skeleton including the left and right forehead bones (frontals), four fragmentary vertebra, fragments of ribs, a bone from the right hand, a partial hip bone (right ilium), unidentifiable fragments of long bones, and two bones from digit IV of the left foot. A more complete specimen (WSC 1027), also from the Menefee Formation, was identified in 2021 but it has yet to be described.
Tyrannosaurid fossils from the Menefee, including tooth fragments and a footbone reported by Hunt and Lucas in 1993, and another tooth fragment reported by Lewis in 2006, can't be referred to Dynamoterror dynastes because it lacks those parts for direct comparison.
