THe AMERICAN Museum JOuRNAL 
VOLUME XV 
OCTOBER, 1915 
NUMBER 6 
TYRANNOSAURUS, THE LARGEST FLESH-EATING 
ANIMAL THAT EVER LIVED 
By Barnum Brown 
AWN glows along the shore of a 
|) lagoon near the sea three mil- 
lions of years ago in Montana. 
The landscape is of low relief; sycamores 
and ginkgo trees mingle with figs, palms 
and bananas. There are few twittering 
birds in the tree-tops and no herds of 
grazing animals to greet the early sun. 
A huge herbivorous dinosaur Tracho- 
don, coming on shore for some favorite 
food has been seized and partly eaten 
by a giant Tyrannosaurus. Whilst this 
monster is ravenously consuming the 
carcass another Tyrannosaurus draws 
near determined to dispute the prey. 
The stooping animal hesitates, partly 
rises and prepares to spring on its oppo- 
nent. With colossal bodies poised on 
massive hind legs and steadied by long 
tails, ponderous heads armed with sharp 
dagger-like teeth three to five inches 
long, front limbs exceedingly smali but 
set for a powerful clutch, they are the 
very embodiment of dynamic animal 
force. 
This is the picture conjured by a group 
of three fossil skeletons in the American 
Museum which completed will occupy a 
space fifty-four feet long and twelve 
feet wide. The erect Tyrannosaurus 
skeleton now finished measures forty- 
seven feet in length from tip to tip and 
eighteen and one-half feet in height. 
Larger herbivorous dinosaurs have been 
found in the United States and in Africa 
in rocks of an earlier age but their 
carnivorous contemporaries were at least 
a third smaller than Tyrannosaurus 
which we can safely state is the largest 
terrestrial flesh-eater of all ages. 
A complete skeleton has never been 
found; even scattered remains are rare; 
but the Museum’s skeletons fortunately 
supplement each other in such a way 
that bones missing in the one have been 
cast from the other. Only the tip of the 
tail and the lower part of the front 
limbs have been modeled from an allied 
form. 
The discovery of these rare fossils 
is of peculiar interest. While hunting 
deer along the Missouri River some years 
ago, Dr. W. T. Hornaday, director of 
the New York Zodlogical Park, dis- 
covered several large fossil bones. One 
of these shown to me, I identified as part 
of a horn of a dinosaur Triceratops; and 
photographs which Dr. Hornaday had 
taken of the scene of discovery showed a 
striking similarity to localities in Wyo- 
ming where many Cretaceous fossils have 
been found. 
The following year, 1902, an expedi- 
tion was sent to the new locality. Our 
outfitting point and base of supplies was 
Miles City, Montana, a point on the 
railroad one hundred and thirty miles 
from the “bad lands.” After five long 
days across measureless undulating 
prairie, past numerous flocks of sheep 
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