What is "Laelaps tortus"? AMNH 3960

[Richard Sutton]

Does anyone have any idea what this name pertains to?

(In the spirit of my last post, lol) Olshevsky et al. (1995b) list it under "Species Referred at Some Time to the Family Tyrannosauridae" as follows:

Laelaps tortus | AMNH 3960 (3 undescribed teeth) | Cope unpublished | Manuscript name; probably not a tyrannosaurid.

I can't find any record of AMNH 3960 with resources available online; does anyone with any direct knowledge of the AMNH's vert-palaeo collections have any idea what this is?

Not that it really matters, it's a nomen manuscriptum and probably predates 1877, but I'm cursed by curiosity.

Richard Sutton
Undergraduate Student
York University, Toronto ON

[Mickey Mortimer]

Nice find. It is on the AMNH online catalog- https://research.amnh.org/paleontology/search.php?action=detail&specimen_id=46580# . That lists it as from the Judith River Formation of Montana and curated as tyrannosaurid. I assume it's from the same batch as lateralis (AMNH 3956),  hazenianus (AMNH 3957), explanatus (AMNH 3958), falculus (AMNH 3959), laevifrons (AMNH 3961), incrassatus (AMNH 3962-3963), and theropod (mostly large and/or identified as tyrannosaurid) teeth AMNH 3964-3970. Cope never listed the specimen numbers for any of these as it was not his style. He did name two other vertebrate species tortus (Stereodectes, Oricardinus), so there's precedent. Weird Olshevsky and Ford never listed it again. I'll ask Ford about it.

Mickey Mortimer

[Maxwell Miles Candlen]

There happen to be a number of completely unpublished Cope names; they currently only exist as labels, handwritten by Cope, stored along with the specimens at the AMNH. Most are associated with specimens that are more or less completely indeterminate, or which Cope decided to refer to an already-named species. A few have squeaked out into the literature, some by Cope himself (Agathaumas “milo” comes to mind), but most have never left those gray cabinets.

Most are not mine to share, but one does concern a certain collection of Cope fossils which I’ve just started working on a redescription of, so fans of old, invalid dinosaur names can look forward to that.

Maxwell Miles Candlen

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dinosaur Mailing Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to DinosaurMailingG...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/DinosaurMailingGroup/5dfa39a3-0da7-4bb5-9087-bfdacd70c0c5n%40googlegroups.com.

[Grant Hurlburt]

This Charles Knight's Leaping Laelaps (1897). " Originally entitled Leaping Laelaps, this watercolor may be the earliest depiction of theropods, or actually any dinosaur, as highly active and dynamic, based on the opinions of E.D. Cope and Henry Fairfield Osborn, the curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History at the time of the painting's commission.  " https://digitalcollections.amnh.org/archive/Dryptosaurus--Leaping-Laelaps--2URM1THKG7N.html

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/DinosaurMailingGroup/CABGPJuQzqkDZ0nor9%3D4x67PbZrULm%2BkS5Qce4BaSb_NVSn9Hkg%40mail.gmail.com.

--

Grant Hurlburt

[Mickey Mortimer]

Well yeah, dinosaurian Laelaps and Knight's painting were based on L. aquilunguis, which was later renamed Dryptosaurus since Laelaps had already been used for a genus of mite. But in 1876 this hadn't quite been realized yet, so Cope was still naming Judith River teeth as new species of Laelaps. Back when the tyrannosaur genus meta was Deinodon vs. Aublysodon vs. Laelaps. But "Laelaps" "tortus" has gone unnoticed for thirty years, which is pretty impressive for dinosaurian taxa. Ford didn't recall any details after all these years, so I asked Benson if the name is on its museum label. I'll update once I get a reply.

Mickey Mortimer