Nanotyrannus was not a teenaged T. rex

For decades, researchers have debated whether a fossil of a small, fierce theropod belonged to a teenaged Tyrannosaurus rex or was a separate species. Now they know: Nanotyrannus can stand on its own two feet. The tiny tyrannosaur wasn’t just a younger T. rex, scientists report October 30 in Nature.

An exquisitely preserved skeleton of a small tyrannosaur from Montana’s 67-million-year-old Hell Creek formation can end the debate, researchers say. The skeleton is part of a famous fossil known as Dueling Dinosaurs, featuring a small tyrannosaur entangled with its possible prey, a horned ceratopsian dinosaur, entombed together in rock for millions of years.

A famous fossil known as dueling

→ Continue reading at Science News

More from author

Related posts

Advertisment

Latest posts

A New Startup Wants to Edit Human Embryos

In 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui shocked the world when he revealed that he had created the first gene-edited babies. Using Crispr, he tweaked...

NASA’s Quiet Supersonic Jet Takes Flight

About an hour after sunrise over the Mojave Desert of Southern California, NASA’s newest experimental supersonic jet took to the skies for the first...

This flower smells like injured ants — and flies can’t resist it

A Japanese flower lures in its pollinators with a morbid perfume — the scent of injured ants. The unusual scent belongs to Vincetoxicum nakaianum,...