Author: Jeremy Rehm / Source: Science News
A new dinosaur shows that even Tyrannosaurus rex had humble beginnings.
Dubbed Moros intrepidus, or “the harbinger of doom,” the new species is one of the smallest tyrannosaurs yet discovered from the Cretaceous Period.
Analyses of the animal’s fossilized leg show that the creature would have stood only 1.2 meters at the hip, and weighed an estimated 78 kilograms — about the size of a mule deer, researchers report February 21 in Communications Biology.Dating to around 96 million years ago, the fossil is the oldest tyrannosaur found in North America. Its discovery helps fill in a 70-million-year gap in the evolution of tyrannosaurs leading up to the ferocious giants like T. rex.
Teeth from early, petite tyrannosaurs have been found in rocks in North America dating to the Late Jurassic Period around 150 million years ago, when larger predator dinosaurs called allosaurs topped the food chain. But the next time tyrannosaurs are seen in the North American fossil record is 70 million years later, when they’ve become the colossal top predators. When, and how,…
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