Published
Fossil researchSkull turns out to be T-Rex's big sister
When researchers re-examined a partial skull identified as T-rex, the researchers came to a different conclusion.
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Researchers have identified T-rex's big sister: Tyrannosaurus mcrensis.
Sergei Krasinski
New dinosaur species identified from partial skull
Nature/Science Reports
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For a long time, parts of a dinosaur skull were thought to be parts of a T-Rex.
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The re-evaluation concludes that it is a new species of Tyrannosaurus.
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Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis lived about seven million years before T-Rex.
Forty years ago, a partial dinosaur skull was discovered in southern Mexico. Researchers have now discovered that the prehistoric animal is a new species of Tyrannosaurus and a close relative of the T-Rex.
The skull is said to have originally been classified as part of a T-rex In a statement, which was published by the journal Nature. However, Anthony Fiorillo and his colleagues at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science recognized the differences from the bones.
differences
As “New Scientist” writes, researchers suspect that this specimen is the ancestor of the T-Rex. They named it Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis. They estimate that the dinosaur was about twelve meters long and lived about seven million years before the T-Rex.
As Fiorillo says, the differences between the two dinosaur species aren't that great. For example, the skull of T-Mcraeensis is thinner than that of its larger sister.
So Jared Voris of the University of Calgary in Canada criticizes this finding. “I hesitate to consider Tyrannosaurus mcrensis anything other than a T-rex,” he was quoted as saying by New Scientist. Many anatomical features can also be found in the T-Rex.
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