Tiny Tyrannosaur This photo and graphic shows a really cool discovery by paleontologists from the Mu

Tiny TyrannosaurThis photo and graphic shows a really cool discovery by paleontologists from the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas –an Arctic mini-T-Rex!The fossil was found in 70 million year old rocks in a quarry far on the northern edge of Alaska in 2006. The specimens were carefully extracted, brought back to the museum, and characterized for years before publication.The dinosaur seems to have been about 7 meters long – just about ½ the length of a standard T-Rex, but it has many of the same body morphologies suggesting a close relationship. It’s small compared to T-Rex and even compared to some of T-Rex’s predecessors, as you see in the graphic at the bottom.One obvious point might be that “oh it’s just a baby” but the authors found features on the jaw of the animal that are only found on the bones of adult T-Rex skeletons and not on the youth, suggesting this species was a fully-formed adult.The species has been given the name Nanuqsaurus hoglundi (Nanuq being the Inuit word for polar bear).Other species related to T-Rex have been found in Alaska, but this is the first mini-version Although the globe was warmer during the Cretaceous, Alaska was still far to the north at that time, so large temperature swings due to changing seasons may have impacted the size of this animal. Sea levels were also higher at the time, so it’s also possible this animal’s environment could have been restricted due to a combination of high sea levels and high mountains to the South. Species have been found to “shrink” in response to evolutionary pressures under certain circumstances (even humans do this!), so this fossil could represent the expression of that same mechanism, just on a very famous dinosaur.Also…no word on whether or not this guy had feathers.-JBBImage credit:http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0091287http://www.nature.com/news/diminutive-dinosaur-stalked-the-arctic-1.14859 -- source link

More pics about