gorgosaurus

See also: Gorgosaurus

English

Skeletal mount, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

Etymology

From the genus name, Gorgosaurus, from Ancient Greek γοργός (gorgós, “grim, fierce, terrible”) + -saurus (suffix forming genus names of dinosaurs).

Noun

gorgosaurus (plural gorgosauruses or gorgosauri)

1. A tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur of the genus Gorgosaurus that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period (Campanian), between about 76.6 and 75.1 million years ago.
   • 1930 April 22, Murray, “Ruth Throughout the Ages”, in The Evening Star, number 31,402, Washington, D.C., page C—1, columns 3–4:

     No. 1 is in the Stone age, the time when man went around dressed in a bearskin and threw rocks at prehistoric monsters called Ankylosauri, Gorgosauri or Triceratops.

   • 1979, Wes Ives, Edward E. Simbalist, Saurians (Chivalry & Sorcery), Jericho, N.Y.: Fantasy Games Unlimited; republished in Red Book, 5th edition, 2013, page 59, column 1:

     The Gorgosaurus is notable for its ability to maintain a high speed chase for some distance, unlike the Tyrannosaurus or Allosaurus. Also, it can bound for its full length in an attack leap! Like Allosaurus, Gorgosaurus is terribly jealous of its territory, but it will permit a female to range in its territory and often forms a mated pair hunting team for the spring and summer. Typical ranges are the same as that of the Allosaurus, but Gorgosauri will also enter swamps, sticking to the shallows and to the dry land of the mounds dotting swamps.

   • 1981, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, page 127, column 1:

     Having seen how quickly and savagely the gorgosauri and the allosaurus had devastated the exploration team, Ian and Rebecca had a fearful respect for the meat-eating species.

   • 1987, Rudy Kraft, Paul Jaquays, Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Griffin Island (RuneQuest), 3rd edition, 5th volume, Eastwood, Notts.: Games Workshop Ltd, →ISBN, page 15, column 1:

     Gorgosauri are carnivores, usually hungry, and may attack anything encountered unless they have just eaten a very large meal.

   • 1987, Valerie Broege, “Puer Country: Imaging Canada and Its American Shadow”, in Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Jungian Thought, Dallas, Tex.: Spring Publications, Inc., →ISBN, →ISSN, page 22:

     Henry Beissel asks in “First Canto: Landscape,” “What artist dare raise his vision from the dead/centre of creation against this dinosaur indifference?” (CN, 7). Mention of dinosaurs, pterodactyls and gorgosauruses in particular, recurs in the Tenth and Eleventh Cantos as part of his geological imagery (CN, 45-55).

   • 1995, The Beauty and Splendor of North America: Scenic Treasures of Canada and the USA, Montreal, Que.: The Reader’s Digest Association Canada Ltd., →ISBN, page 18:

     Hadrosaurs — duck-billed, plant-eating creatures weighing up to 3,600 kilograms — were the most common dinosaurs in what is now the park. The shallow water at the sea’s edge suited their partially webbed feet and provided vegetation for their diet. The water also served as a refuge from the giant meat-eating gorgosauruses that preyed on them.

   • 1996, Sonia Mycak, In Search of the Split Subject: Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology, and the Novels of Margaret Atwood, Toronto, Ont.: ECW Press, →ISBN, page 128:

     In this context, the figments of Lesje’s imagination — the visions of gorgosauruses, pterodactyls, and iguanodons — function at the point of suture as the seamlike line of junction between her Imaginary existence and a symbolic one.

   • 2005, Belle Smith, chapter 25, in Lucian’s Place, Baltimore, Md.: PublishAmerica, LLLP, →ISBN, pages 311–312:

     I think you have just killed three Gorgosauri or Gorgasaurus,^[sic] whichever is grammatically correct. They are like us, misplaced in time. We saw one on the disk Fanny made with the first exploration ship. We were afraid they would come over the wall one day. They should have been extinct sixty-five million years ago.

   • 2009, Charles Foster, “Who’s Right? Evidence and the Lack of It”, in The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin, London: Hodder & Stoughton, →ISBN, page 79:

     In 1997, the amateur fossil hunters Cliff and Sandy Linster, digging near Chorteau, Montana, unearthed the skeleton of a dinosaur – a 72-million-year-old female gorgosaurus. Gorgosauruses are not particularly rare, but this one had an interesting quirk. Rattling around inside its skull was a bone ball. It was an extraskeletal osteosarcoma – a bone tumour – which would have encroached on its cerebellum and its brainstem.

Further reading

• Gorgosaurus on Wikipedia.Wikipedia