Manospondylus

porous vertebra

• manos · Greek · porous, sparse, loose-textured
• spondylos · Greek · vertebra

The name combines Greek words for "porous" or "sparse" and "vertebra". Edward Drinker Cope chose it in 1892 for the spongy, porous texture of the bone in the vertebrae he described from South Dakota. The type species is Manospondylus gigas, based on fragmentary vertebrae.

Named by

Cope

Year named

1892

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stage

Maastrichtian

Found in

Hell Creek Formation, South Dakota, USA

The fragmentary type material is now thought by many researchers to belong to Tyrannosaurus rex. Manospondylus is the older name, so it would normally have priority. Tyrannosaurus is the universally used name, and the older name has not been used as valid, so Tyrannosaurus is treated as the name in use. Because the original material is so fragmentary and the identification is not completely certain, Manospondylus is sometimes treated as a doubtful name. The genus is a theropod dinosaur. Details such as the exact locality and the type species name should be checked against a specialist source.