Tyrannosauridae
Tyrannosauridae is a family of coelurosaurian dinosaurs that comprises two subfamilies containing up to fifteen genera, including the eponymous Tyrannosaurus. The exact number of genera is controversial, with some experts recognizing as few as three. All of these animals lived near the end of the Cretaceous period and their fossils have been found only in North America and Asia. Well-known genera include Tyrannosaurus, Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Tarbosaurus, and Dynamoterror.

User:Therop User:Morosaurus shinyae Jordi Payà Tony Cairns ★Kumiko★ Kabacchi · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- tyrannosauridPBDB
- Sits inside
- TyrannosauroideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At least 49 million years on record.
The record covers at least 121.4 Mya to 72.2 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 143.1 Mya to 66 Mya.
515 occurrences of Tyrannosauridae on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
515 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
90 formations
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group62
- Nemegt Formation52
- Aguja Formation32
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group30
- Horseshoe Canyon Formation · Edmonton Group26
- Oldman Formation · Belly River Group26
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Tyrannosauridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 66 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 15 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tyrannosauridae and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Tyrannosauridae and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
859 taxa- Trionychidae79 sites
- Hadrosauridae70 sites
- Ceratopsidae62 sites
- Baenidae58 sites
- Myledaphus bipartitus56 sites
- Champsosaurus55 sites
- Tyrannosaurus rex52 sites
- Crocodylia48 sites
- Lepisosteus occidentalis47 sites
- Scapherpeton tectum47 sites
- Paronychodon43 sites
- Chelydridae39 sites
- Opisthotriton kayi39 sites
- Cyclurus fragosus38 sites
- Teleostei38 sites
- Multituberculata35 sites
- Adocus33 sites
- Brachychampsa montana33 sites
- Anura32 sites
- Aves32 sites
- Saurornitholestes langstoni32 sites
- Borealosuchus sternbergii31 sites
- Hadrosaurinae31 sites
- Saurornitholestes31 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 482 sites for Tyrannosauridae, and this reads 240 of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
249 references- Vertebrate biostratigraphy of the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota and northwestern South Dakota23
- Vertebrate microsite assemblages (exclusive of mammals) from the Foremost and Oldman Formations of the Judith River Group (Campanian) of southeastern Alberta: an illustrated guide20
- Vertebrate faunal changes through Lancian and Puercan time in southern Wyoming19
- Tyrannosauroid dinosaurs from the Aguja Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Big Bend National Park, Texas13
- Diversity and variation of theropod dinosaur teeth from the uppermost Santonian Milk River Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Alberta: a quantitative method supporting identification of the oldest dinosaur tooth assemblage in Canada13
- Tyrannosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of western Canada13
- Theropod teeth from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian), Big Bed National Park, Texas12
- The tyrant lizard king, queen and emperor: multiple lines of morphological and stratigraphic evidence support subtle evolution and probable speciation within the North American genus Tyrannosaurus9
- Narrative of the Korea-Mongolian International Dinosaur expeditions (KID) 2006–2010 with scientific results7
- A history of Albertosaurus discoveries in Alberta, Canada7
- Late Cretaceous dinosaurs from the Denver Basin, Colorado7
- Geographical and geological data from the Polish-Mongolian Palaeontological Expeditions7
Each of the 515 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 237 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Tyrannosauridae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- User:Therop User:Morosaurus shinyae Jordi Payà Tony Cairns ★Kumiko★ Kabacchi
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Structured light scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Tyrannosauridae indet. · dmnh:epv:149764
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- Nobilis the Palaeovespa
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itTyrannosauroidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Osborn 1906