Bonjour, Bistahieversor

The badlands of the Bisti/De-na-zin Wilderness, by flickr user westernskies_de_2. More shots of the region here.

Multiple choice time. The "Bistahi destroyer" is:

A) A Pokémon
B) A guitar particularly well-suited to shredding of the most brutal kind. Crafted of polished obsidian.
C) The brand new tyrannosaur from New Mexico
D) All of the above

In a perfect world, the answer would be D. But this is a dinosaur blog, holmes. So C it must be. Paleontologists Thomas Carr and Tom Williamson, of Carthage College and the University of New Mexico, respectively, have published an introductory description of Bistahieversor sealeyi, a mid-size Late Cretaceous tyrannosaur from New Mexico. It appears in the latest Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Bistahieversor sealeyi is the first new species of tyrannosaur discovered in the western US in thirty years, and the first top predator paleontologists have definitively identified in this region. There have been other bits and bobs identifiable as tyrannosaur pieces found in the area, but the two specimens of B. sealeyi, a juvenile and an adult, are the first well-preserved skeletons. In a great interview with ReBecca Hunt-Foster at Dinochick, Dr. Carr promises a longer monograph on Bistahieversor later this year, and says that he's working on projects dealing with both Daspletosaurus and T. rex. It looks like the tyrannosaur news isn't going to let up just because we've passed the arbitrary temporal boundary called "New Year's Day."

Also, it would behoove you to check out the beautiful illustration of Bistahieversor at the Hairy Museum of Natural History.

I can't pass up mentioning this little gem. It's the very first sentence of the B. sealeyi press release put out by the SVP: "New Mexico is known for amazing local cuisine, Aztec ruins and the Los Alamos National Laboratory."

Aztec ruins in New Mexico? Really, SVP? You really want to stand by that?