Minotaurasaurus is not a Tyrannosaurus and it is not a fossil of North America. Instead, it represents a real and, unfortunately, growing problem, even if we do not hear about it daily in the news. The skull is actually very interesting because it looks a lot like many other ankylosaurs we knew of previously and this has caused a lot of researchers, such as Victoria Arbour and Phillip Currie, have reassigned Minotaurasaurus to another taxon, Tachia kielanae. Another study upheld the original description and nothing else has surfaced since that time. Regardless, the skull is not in a museum where all of these researchers can look at the original material and come to a solid conclusion. Until it is they, and we, will have to make due with casts and character lists and some photographs to compare the skull to other animals. Description can be tricky though, so this description may be contentious for a some time to come, unless another animal is discovered and can be studied more directly.
|Photograph of a cast of the holotype material. Borrowed from Victoria Arbour's blog here.|