Spectacular Albertosaurus Maxilla Section with Five Rooted Teeth

Description: This is a section of the right maxilla (upper jaw) of the tyrranosaurid dinosaur Albertosaurus containing five rooted teeth. The type species A sarcophagus was collected by Joseph Burr Tyrrell in 1884, and named by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1905 after the Canadian Province in which it was found. Barnum Brown was a researcher who collected specimens for Osborn who on a trip to the Red Deer region of Alberta collected limb bones of some 9 distinct individuals in a single location. While he was an excellent field worker, his notes were less than complete, and the location was lost. The site was rediscovered in 1997 by Dr Philip J Currie of the University of Alberta after some extensive detective work allowed him to correlate landscape features with Brown’s photographs of the location in Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park. Over the course of the next decade, some 22 examples were recovered. Subsequently an additional 4 specimens have been excavated, lending credence to the belief by some researchers that they were pack hunters.

The specimen here comes from the Judith River Formation of Montana and is from a juvenile specimen of a taxon that could grow to some 9 to 10 meters in overall length. I have included a photo of a reconstruction of a juvenile specimen along with a 6 foot upright Homo sapien mammal for scale, a photo of the mammal’s spouse helping to excavate and preserve an Albertosaurus femur in situ at the Dry Island site in 2006, as well as a photo of a skull of a juvenile taken at the Royal Tyrrell (same name as the man who discovered Albertosaurus) Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. While you may have an opportunity to add an unrooted tooth to your collection on rare occasions, the chance to obtain a specimen such as this is rare indeed.