Alioramus remotus. Original artwork from Feathered Dinosaurs.

2005.
Watercolour and gouache on Arches paper 350 x 605 mm, unframed, signed and dated by artist.

Alioramus remotus. Original artwork from Feathered Dinosaurs.

Alioramus was discovered in the remote deserts of Mongolia on the Russian-Polish expedition of the 1960s and named by Soviet dinosaur expert Dr Sergei Kurzanov in 1976. Alioramus is known from a fragmentary skull and bits of the body skeleton. It was about six metres long, roughly half the size of Tyrannosaurus, and possibly weighed up to 500 kilograms. Its most distinctive feature is the rows of knobby processes along the mid-line of its snout, almost certainly an ornamentive feature used either to attract mates, or as a deterrent to other males. Alioramus appears to be a close relative of the larger Asian tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus, according to a study of the skull characteristics of tyrannosaurids by Dr Philip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canada.

Artist's note: Known to science only by the skull, this head study is life-size. The rudimentary hairlike feathers can be seen around the base of the distinctive median horns.

Superfamily: Tyrannosauroidea
Family: Tyrannosauridae
Age: Late Cretaceous
Locality: Nogoon Tsav Beds, Bayankhongor Province, Mongolia.