Moros is a genus of small tyrannosauroid theropod that lived during the Late Cretaceous period on what is now Utah, United States.
It contains a single species, M. intrepidus. Moros represents the earliest known diagnostic tyrannosauroid material from the Cretaceous of North America by a margin of about 15 million years.
Discovery and naming[]
Moros was first discovered at the Stormy Theropod site located in Emery County in the U.S. state of Utah. Paleontologist had been researching the area for ten years when in 2013 limb bones were seen jutting out of a hillside by Lindsay Zanno, prompting the excavation.
Description[]
Moros was a small-bodied, cursorial tyrannosauroid with an estimated weight of about 78 kg (172 lb). The foot bones of Moros were extremely slender, with metatarsal proportions found to be more similar to ornithomimids than to other Late Cretaceous tyrannosauroids.
Classification[]
In their phylogenetic analyses, Zanno and colleagues in 2019 recovered Moros as a basal pantyrannosaurian alongside Asian taxa from the middle of the Cretaceous such as Xiongguanlong and Timurlengia.
In popular culture[]
- Moros appeared in the movie Jurassic World: Dominion.
- Moros appeared in the movie T-Rex: an evolutionary journey
Gallery[]
