(Re)otyrannus - revisiting the “father of all tyrants”, Eotyrannus lengi
This will be brief, but I wanted to showcase my new skeletal reconstruction of Eotyrannus lengi.
I was never satisfied with the original skeleton I created for Naish and Cau’s Eotyrannus monograph published in 2022. At that time, I was still learning how to properly create skeletal diagrams, studying anatomy, and developing my style. Additionally, there seemed to be a complete lack of information regarding the postcranial anatomy of basal tyrannosauroids that I could find, which forced me to create a more “generic” representation. The result was rather odd, featuring an unusually long torso and a tiny neck, which never felt right to me.
Recently, while researching basal tyrannosauroids, including megaraptorans, I decided it was finally time to revisit my Eotyrannus reconstruction. It's been glaring evilly at me from my portfolio for too long!
This reconstruction was heavily inspired by another feathered tyrannosaur from the Early Cretaceous period, the Chinese Yutyrannus huali. This may come as a surprise to some, as Yutyrannus is often categorized as a proceratosaurid tyrannosaur. However, the monograph on Eotyrannus indicates that Yutyrannus is much more closely related to Eotyrannus than earlier phylogenetic analyses suggested. Eotyrannus is found to be more derived than Yutyrannus while being more basal than other taxa such as Xiongguanlong. There are a few reasons for this, mainly that the Eotyrannus monograph recognises a few more phylogenetically significant characteristics that had previously been unrecognised.
Thanks to a strong VPN (hopefully) and a good bit of digging, I managed to find some nice(r) images of the postcrania of Yutyrannus specimens ZCDM V5000 and ZCDM V5001, which aided me heavily in this new and improved reconstruction. My old diagram isn’t necessarily “inaccurate” now - like I said, for whatever reason I just wasn’t happy with it, and think I could do a way better job. Hopefully, you all agree.
Time callibrated phylogeny of tyrannosauroidea, including Eotyrannus and Yutyrannus. Figure 37 from Naish and Cau (2022)
A: Mandible of Yutyrannus huali specimen ZCDM V5001, modified from Dave Hone’s archosaur musings. B: Reconstructed mandible of the holotype specimen of Eotyrannus lengi, modified from figures in Naish and Cau (2022). Latf = lateral furrows.
