T-Rex Wrong park shirt
The fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex was an enormous dinosaur. However, this giant carnivore had very humble beginnings, according to a new fossil discovery.
Paleontologists recently discovered an early ancestor to T. rex that was positively puny, about the size of a small deer. The scientists found fossilized leg bones and teeth of T. rex's predecessor at a dig site in central Utah known as the Cliffs of Insanity. Click here to buy this shirt: T-Rex Wrong park shirt.
These fossils came from a previously unknown tyrannosaur species and filled a 70-million-year gap in the family tree of North American tyrannosaurs, researchers reported in a new study.
Scientists named the newfound tyrannosaur species Moros intrepidus. "Moros" means "the embodiment of impending doom," and "intrepidus" is the Latin word for "intrepid," referencing tyrannosaurs' bold migration into new habitats across Cretaceous North America, the study authors wrote.
The fossils were bones from the tyrannosaur of doom's right hind leg and foot, dating to 96 million years ago. In life, the animal was a slender dinosaur that stood no more than 4 feet tall (1 meter) at the hip. It was likely a juvenile that was nearly full-grown — at least 6 to 7 years old — when it died, according to the study.
But even though the deer-size dinosaur lacked the power of the much-bigger T. rex, it would still have been "a formidable predator," lead study author Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University and head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, said in a statement.
Get more here: https://rockatee.com
