Tarbosaurus vs Deinocheirus coloring page

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Today's new drawing is of a relative of T. rex taking on an unusual herbivore.

Tarbosaurus vs Deinocheirus

Tarbosaurus was a large relative of T. rex.  Some paleontologists think that it should be in the same Genus.  Tarbosaurus lived in part of the old world, that is now Asia.  While Tyrannosaurus rex lived in the northern part of the new world, A.K.A. North America.  

Tarbosaurus bataar was a large Theropod.  It had small arms with two fingers like all Tyrannosaurs seem to have had.  It was a bit smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex.  Tarbosaurus grew to around 39 feet long.  It weighed about 5.5 tons or 5 metric tons.  That is 11,000 lbs or 5,000 kg.  

The scientific name is Tarbosaurus bataar which means "alarming lizard hero."  It is kind of funny because "baatar" is the Mongolian word for hero.  So it is actually misspelled in the species name of this dinosaur as "bataar."    

Deinocheirus was one weird dinosaur.  When fossils from it were first found it was the 8 foot long arms with 8-inch claws on the end.  So it was assumed that this was a huge predator.  Then much of the rest of the skeleton was found and it was discovered that it had a small duck-bill dinosaur-like head, but with no teeth.  It had fish bones in its gut area.  Yet there was evidence of it eating plants as well.  So it was an omnivore because it ate both plants and animals. 

The large claws were for probably two things, -gathering food, and - defense against predators.  Of course, Deinocheirus may have used its long claws to fillet the fish or even to spear the fish.  There were gastroliths in the Deinocheirus stomach area that indicate that it swallowed stones to help grind up its food.  Gastroliths feel almost greasy from being polished inside the animal's stomach and from the effect of the stomach acid on the stones. Many species of herbivorous dinosaurs swallowed gastroliths.  Some modern birds also do this. 

3 Gastroliths that were found inside a dinosaur's ribcage.

Therizinosaurus is also from Mongolia and its discovery years ago had a similar situation where the paleontologists found the arms and even bigger claws first and assumed they had found a huge predator... but it also had a small head and ate plants.  It had huge claws for the same reasons as Deinocheirus.   (The video Chased By Dinosaurs - The Giant Claw has a scene of a Therizinosaurus defending itself from a large Theropod predator.  It may be that Deinocheirus defended itself the same way.)  Below is a drawing from an earlier post of Therizinosaurus. Notice the similarities. The two dinosaurs are quite possibly related.  It is thought that both evolved from smaller pure PREDATORY dinosaurs.  

Therizinosaurus browsing on a Cycad

Deinocheirus was not a small animal.  It weighed more than Tarbosaurus.  Deinocheirus weighed around 7.1  tons or 6.4  metric tons.  It was around 36 feet or 11 meters long.  So Deinocheirus was shorter but longer than Tarbosaurus.  Deinocheirus had an unusual feature of a hump on its back.  It was like a sail but thicker... so more like a hump than a sail.  

The scientific name for Deinocheirus is actually Deinocheirus mirificus.  Deinocheirus means terrible hand and mirificus means peculiar or weird because of the unusual arms, hands, and claws on the hands.  So the dinosaur is basically named the "weird terrible hand." 

When facing an attack Deinocheirus possibly swung its long arms and claws like a sword.  The Tarbosaurus that was unlucky might get its gut ripped open by those long claws that were powered by weird but very long and strong arms.  

NOTE:  The drawings can be found, in printable form, by clicking on the button labeled "Paleontology."  Then scroll to the bottom of the Mesozoic section of the list for the new drawing.  The older drawing will be located further up the list.