Nanuqsaurus hoglundi

[Infinity Blade]

Nanuqsaurus hoglundi

Description paper

Absract

"Tyrannosaurid theropods were dominant terrestrial predators in Asia and western North America during the last of the Cretaceous. The known diversity of the group has dramatically increased in recent years with new finds, but overall understanding of tyrannosaurid ecology and evolution is based almost entirely on fossils from latitudes at or below southern Canada and central Asia. Remains of a new, relatively small tyrannosaurine were recovered from the earliest Late Maastrichtian (70-69Ma) of the Prince Creek Formation on Alaska's North Slope. Cladistic analyses show the material represents a new tyrannosaurine species closely related to the highly derived Tarbosaurus+Tyrannosaurus clade. The new taxon inhabited a seasonally extreme high-latitude continental environment on the northernmost edge of Cretaceous North America. The discovery of the new form provides new insights into tyrannosaurid adaptability, and evolution in an ancient greenhouse Arctic."


^Not from the description paper. Credit goes to Karen Carr for Nanuqsaurus illustration.

[creature386]

www.nature.com/news/diminutive-dinosaur-stalked-the-arctic-1.14859
Looks like we have the first made up length number (7 m). For now, I'd go with Fragillimus' 5.5 to 6 m figure.

Here is the announcement on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_ulLHrnKUs

[theropod]

5.5-6.0m fits fairly well. Based on the size comparison from the description, I get 5.8m in axial lenght, but the figure is imprecise since it isn’t a skeletal.
Thus we are likely talking about an animal ~750kg in weight.

[theropod]

I just wanted to see how our two newest tyrannosaurids, Nanuqsaurus and Lythronax, compared, and the result is rather surprising;


As we see, the total skull lenghts as estimated by those restorations are consistent with Nanuqsaurus being roughly as long (~5.8m) as shown in the comparison (based on the skeletal of L. argestes), but what we can also see is that the fossil parts (most notably the dentary), are essentially the same size in both.
The 12cm difference in skull lenghts (and the resulting body size disparity) seems to be a result of the more conservative reconstruction on Nanuqsaurus, which is restored as much more compact, with a proportionally shorter, deeper dentary.
If you reconstruct them uniformly, our small artic tyrannosaur ought to turn out comparable to Lythronax in terms of skull lenght, and, assuming the same proportions, about a metre longer (6.8 m) and 60% heavier than usually estimated.

[creature386]

Interesting thought, although I don't know if this is a good place for original research. It looks like the authors didn't look at Lythronax a lot (there was only one short mention in the whole paper), although both were very closely related. From what I have seen, they used a "generalized tyrannosaurid skull reconstruction", probably based on much larger animals, like Tarbosaurus or Tyrannosaurus.

[theropod]

What you see above should not qualify as my original research, it uses nothing but the original work from the papers.

The following could probably be called that (but imo we shouldn’t try to be wikipedia in this regard):
An animal more similar in size is imo a better analogue than ones several times bigger.

[creature386]

Yeah, I kept that in mind, that's why I pointed out "much larger animals".

[Infinity Blade]

So, is Nanuqsaurus not exactly as small as claimed?

[theropod]

It appears it was Lythronax-sized based on the fossils, it ending up a metre shorter seems to be nothing but an artefact of the restoration.

[Admantus]

That Nanuqsaurus looks far too bare to survive the arctic.

www.deviantart.com/art/Arctic-Discovery-440037102 use this picture.

[dinosauria101]

Here is Nanuqsaurus compared to some other tyrannosaurids

[Infinity Blade]

Some new remains seen in this video.



Also the OP needs a major overhaul. I'll try to get to it once I have the time.

[Infinity Blade]

Size comparison of Nanuqsaurus with its namesake.



The creator of this size comparison (Bastion) also wrote a very informative blog post about Nanuqsaurus regarding true adult size (bigger than initially thought), integument, etc.

bastion14.tumblr.com/post/654036333730414592/reconstructing-nanuqsaurus-hoglundi

[Infinity Blade]

Paleoart by James Havens.