For decades, paleontologists have been terrorized by the notion of a teenage Tyrannosaurus rex. Starting in the 1940s, excavations unearthed skulls belonging to what appeared to be smaller and more slender tyrannosaurs. But the scientists were sharply divided on what these skulls represented. Were they a Tween rex or a totally different dinosaur? In 1988, a group of scientists including …
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In Montana, two dinosaurs died mid-battle. One was a Triceratops. The other, a smaller predator, was long believed to be a teenage Tyrannosaurus rex. For years, that assumption shaped textbooks, documentaries, and museum displays. Now, that long-held belief has crumbled. Recent research confirms that the smaller dinosaur wasn’t a young T. rex at all. It was a fully grown Nanotyrannus lancensis. That single …
Read More »Tyrannosaurus rex ranks among the most comprehensively studied extinct vertebrates1 and a model system for dinosaur paleobiology1. As one of the last surviving non-avian dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus is a crucial datum for assessing terrestrial biodiversity, ecosystem structure, and biogeographic exchange immediately preceding the end-Cretaceous mass extinction —one of Earth’s greatest biological catastrophes. Paleobiological studies of Tyrannosaurus, including ontogenetic niche partitioning2-4, feeding, …
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