Presumed ancestor of T-rex, expert finds new tyrannosaurus fossil Page all

KOMPAS.com – Paleontologists have discovered the remains of a never-before-seen tyrannosaurus. The fossil is thought to be ancestor of the T-rex.

According to the researchers, this newly discovered species is the direct ancestor of tyrannosaurus rex while also helping to settle the great T-rex lineage debate.

New named species Daspletosaurus wilsoni It has a unique arrangement of small, pointed horns around its eyes.

The Tyrannosaurus physique was later identified from petrified skull sections and skeletal fragments, including ribs and leg bones dating to about 76.5 million years ago.

Read also: T-Rex turns out to be much larger than previously thought, study explains

Paleontologists at the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota found the fossilized ancestor of the T-rex in the Judith River Formation of northeastern Montana between 2017 and 2021.

Quoted from Live scienceThe team initially discovered the fossil on Wednesday (11/30/2022) after crew member Jack Wilson noticed a small, flat piece of bone protruding from the bottom of a cliff that was later revealed to be part of the nostril of a dinosaur.

Digging new tyrannosaurus fossil it was, however, very challenging as it was buried under a solid 8m high rock.

The researchers had to painstakingly chisel away large portions of the cliff with drills before they could begin excavating the fossils of the T-rex’s supposed ancestor, an apex predator dinosaur.

Read also: Evolution of the T-rex, it has super small eyes to have a strong bite

Researchers had thought that D.wilsoni was a descendant of Daspletosaurus torosus and its predecessor Daspletosaurus horneri which probably appeared between 77 and 75 million years ago.

But the newly discovered fossil anatomy supports the idea that the Daspletosaurus lineage was the ancestor of the T-rex.

“Many researchers disagree on whether tyrannosaurids represented a single lineage that evolved in one place or whether different species were closely related to each other,” said Elias Warshaw, lead author of the study.

But D.wilsoni’s findings show that the three daspletosaurs followed one another as successive steps in an evolutionary lineage rather than branching off from each other.

Read also: Juvenile T-rex called the cause of the extinction of medium-sized dinosaurs

So D.wilsoni is a good candidate to be a transitional species between D. torosus and D. horneri because it shares a number of features with ancient tyrannosaurs, such as having protruding horns around the eyes.

However, it also has features seen in younger species, such as dilated air sacs in the skull.

“In this way, D. wilsoni is the midway point or missing link between younger and older tyrannosaur species,” the researchers wrote.

Published in the journal a study related to the discovery of a new tyrannosaur fossil thought to be the ancestor of the T-rex Paleontology and evolutionary sciences.

Read also: A study reveals that there are 2.5 billion T-Rex that once inhabited the Earth

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