Daspletosaurini

Daspletosaurini is an extinct clade (tribe) of tyrannosaurine dinosaurs that lived in Laramidia during the Late Cretaceous (Middle Campanian) period. It consists of two genera: Daspletosaurus and Thanatotheristes. Four species have been described in the two genera, namely Daspletosaurus torosus, Daspletosaurus horneri, Daspletosaurus wilsoni, and Thanatotheristes degrootorum. At one point all of them were assigned as specimens of D. torosus, but several papers since 2017 have found them to represent distinct species. Some researchers found anagenesis in the group, whether contained in a daspletosaurin clade or paraphyletic in respect to the lineage of tyrannosaurines leading up to Tyrannosaurus, but a 2023 study refuted this theory on the basis of morphological and stratigraphical data.

==Description== thumb|left|Size of four daspletosaurin species compared to a human Daspletosaurins were large predators, reaching around in length. However, they were not the largest tyrannosaurids, as more derived taxa, such as Tyrannosaurus, could reach lengths of more than .