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