{"id":344565,"date":"2025-10-31T02:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/344565\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T02:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T02:33:14","slug":"teenage-t-rex-fossil-is-actually-a-different-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/344565\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Teenage T. rex\u2019 fossil is actually a different species"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"A artist's impression of a pack of Nanotyrannus attackin a juvenile T. rex.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/d41586-025-03553-z_51640206.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">This artistic interpretation shows a pack of Nanotyrannus attacking a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex (front left).Credit: Anthony Hutchings<\/p>\n<p>A fossil once assumed to be of a young Tyrannosaurus rex is in fact that of a different species altogether, and the dinosaur it belongs to was a fully grown adult at the time of its death, palaeontologists have found.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-00928-y\" class=\"u-link-inherit\" data-track=\"click\" data-track-label=\"recommended article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"recommended__image\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/d41586-025-03553-z_26599284.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"recommended__title u-serif\">Facelift for T. rex: analysis suggests teeth were covered by thin lips<\/p>\n<p><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The small tyrannosaur \u2014 named Nanotyrannus \u2014 is about half the length and one-tenth of the body mass of a fully grown T. rex \u2014 which led scientists to initially suspect the fossil belonged to a teenage T. rex. But the specimen has several distinct physical features, too.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNanotyrannus is a small-bodied predator designed for speed. It\u2019s very agile and has long powerful arms [that are] larger than those of the T. rex,\u201d says Lindsay Zanno, a palaeontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Nanotyrannus also had a shorter tail than did T. rex and sharper, less curved teeth.<\/p>\n<p>The findings, published in Nature on 30 October<a href=\"#ref-CR1\" data-track=\"click\" data-action=\"anchor-link\" data-track-label=\"go to reference\" data-track-category=\"references\">1<\/a>, come from the \u2018Duelling Dinosaurs\u2019 fossils \u2014 a Triceratops and a small tyrannosaur found tangled in combat in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 2006. The specimens date back to the latest Cretaceous period, around 67 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Small but ferocious<\/p>\n<p>To determine the Nanotyrannus\u2019s age and growth rate, Zanno and her colleague James Napoli, a palaeontologist at Stony Brook University in New York, studied the growth rings present in a thin slice of one of the fossilized bones. These marks show how bone growth has slowed down and sped up with the seasons, creating layers like a tree trunk\u2019s annual rings. The researchers compared the dinosaur\u2019s growth rate with that of a crocodile, one of its closest living relatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This artistic interpretation shows a pack of Nanotyrannus attacking a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex (front left).Credit: Anthony Hutchings A&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":344566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10046,10047,85273,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-344565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","9":"tag-multidisciplinary","10":"tag-palaeontology","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115466444040635145","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}