No kidding, T. rex's Chinese cousin Pinocchio rex packed a big bite
Its nickname may sound funny - Pinocchio rex - but it probably would not have been wise to laugh at this strange, long-snouted cousin of the famous meat-eating dinosaur T. rex: it could easily have eaten you alive.
Scientists said they had identified a new member of Tyrannosaurus rex's family, a beast named Qianzhousaurus sinensis that was up to nine metres long and stalked China at the very end of the age of dinosaurs.
It differs in some significant ways from other tyrannosaurs, especially with a skull far more elongated than that of T. rex.
"It's a new breed of tyrannosaur, with a long snout and lots of horns on its skull, very different from the short-snouted, robust, muscular skulls of T. rex. So it tells us that tyrannosaurs were more ecologically variable than we previously thought," said palaeontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, one of the researchers.
Its elongated snout prompted researchers to nickname it Pinocchio rex, inspired by the wooden puppet who dreamed of being a real boy but whose nose grew when he told a lie. "The long snout made us think of Pinocchio and his long nose, so Pinocchio rex seemed like a cheeky nickname," Brusatte said.
Two other tyrannosaur fossils with long snouts have been found previously in Mongolia but both were juveniles. It had been unclear whether the long snout was just a juvenile feature.
"The new fossil solves this debate because it is twice the size of the two Mongolian specimens and much more mature, and still has the long snout and weird horns. So these were not juvenile features, but characteristic features of this unusual subgroup of long-snouted tyrannosaurs," Brusatte said.
Qianzhousaurus lived about 66 million years ago, not long before a huge asteroid, believed to have been 10km wide, hit earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and many other creatures. "It would have been one of the last surviving dinosaurs and this species may have even witnessed the asteroid impact," said Brusatte, whose study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Qianzhousaurus was smaller than the 12-metre long T. rex, which lived at the same time in North America and was the largest known land predator ever. Even though it still had T. rex's "toothy grin", Qianzhousaurus' snout and its more slender build suggest it favoured different types of prey than "conventional" tyrannosaurs.
"It was still a big boy," Brusatte said. "And it still had a long mouthful of sharp teeth. You wouldn't want to run into it. It is something of a runt compared to T. rex, but T. rex was the baddest predator of all time."
The beautifully preserved fossil was found by workmen at a construction site in Jiangxi province in southern China.
Qianzhousaurus lived in a fairly wet, lush, landscape full of dinosaurs including feathered, bird-like ones named Banji, Ganzhousaurus, Jiangxisaurus and Nankangia that may have been on its menu, as well as the huge, long-necked Gannansaurus.
"Although we are only starting to learn about them, the long-snouted tyrannosaurs were apparently one of the main groups of predatory dinosaurs in Asia," another of the researchers, palaeontologist Junchang Lü of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as No kidding, Pinocchio rex packed a big bite
Scientists said they had identified a new member of Tyrannosaurus rex's family, a beast named Qianzhousaurus sinensis that was up to nine metres long and stalked China at the very end of the age of dinosaurs.
It differs in some significant ways from other tyrannosaurs, especially with a skull far more elongated than that of T. rex.
"It's a new breed of tyrannosaur, with a long snout and lots of horns on its skull, very different from the short-snouted, robust, muscular skulls of T. rex. So it tells us that tyrannosaurs were more ecologically variable than we previously thought," said palaeontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, one of the researchers.
Its elongated snout prompted researchers to nickname it Pinocchio rex, inspired by the wooden puppet who dreamed of being a real boy but whose nose grew when he told a lie. "The long snout made us think of Pinocchio and his long nose, so Pinocchio rex seemed like a cheeky nickname," Brusatte said.
Two other tyrannosaur fossils with long snouts have been found previously in Mongolia but both were juveniles. It had been unclear whether the long snout was just a juvenile feature.
"The new fossil solves this debate because it is twice the size of the two Mongolian specimens and much more mature, and still has the long snout and weird horns. So these were not juvenile features, but characteristic features of this unusual subgroup of long-snouted tyrannosaurs," Brusatte said.
Qianzhousaurus lived about 66 million years ago, not long before a huge asteroid, believed to have been 10km wide, hit earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and many other creatures. "It would have been one of the last surviving dinosaurs and this species may have even witnessed the asteroid impact," said Brusatte, whose study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Qianzhousaurus was smaller than the 12-metre long T. rex, which lived at the same time in North America and was the largest known land predator ever. Even though it still had T. rex's "toothy grin", Qianzhousaurus' snout and its more slender build suggest it favoured different types of prey than "conventional" tyrannosaurs.
"It was still a big boy," Brusatte said. "And it still had a long mouthful of sharp teeth. You wouldn't want to run into it. It is something of a runt compared to T. rex, but T. rex was the baddest predator of all time."
The beautifully preserved fossil was found by workmen at a construction site in Jiangxi province in southern China.
Qianzhousaurus lived in a fairly wet, lush, landscape full of dinosaurs including feathered, bird-like ones named Banji, Ganzhousaurus, Jiangxisaurus and Nankangia that may have been on its menu, as well as the huge, long-necked Gannansaurus.
"Although we are only starting to learn about them, the long-snouted tyrannosaurs were apparently one of the main groups of predatory dinosaurs in Asia," another of the researchers, palaeontologist Junchang Lü of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, said.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as No kidding, Pinocchio rex packed a big bite
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