Paleontologists have discovered fossils belonging to a newfound species of tyrannosaur, which could fill an important gap in the evolutionary history of T. rex.
Paleontologists have uncovered the remains of a never-before-seen tyrannosaur that was possibly a direct ancestor of the dinosaur king Tyrannosaurus rex. The newfound species could help settle a big debate about T. rex's evolutionary lineage.
The team initially stumbled across the fossils after crewmember Jack Wilson noticed a small, flat piece of bone projecting out from the bottom of a cliff, which later turned out to be part of the dinosaur's nostril. Excavating the bones, however, proved to be immensely challenging because they were buried beneath 26 feet of solid rock. The researchers had to painstakingly chisel away large parts of the cliff with jackhammers before they could even start excavating the individual bones.
Image 1 of 3Until now, the Tyrannosauridae lineage has been difficult to unravel, making it hard to determine the exact evolutionary relationships between individual species. But the discovery of D. wilsoni suggests that the three daspletosaurs came one after the other, like"consecutive ladder-like steps in a single evolutionary lineage," rather than branching off from one another like"evolutionary cousins," the researchers wrote.
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