— Earthquakes: Water as a lubricant — Geophysicists from Potsdam have established a mode of action that can explain the irregular distribution of strong earthquakes at the San Andreas Fault in California. As the science…
— Ancient environment found to drive marine biodiversity — Much of our knowledge about past life has come from the fossil record - but how accurately does that reflect the true history and drivers of biodiversity on Earth?…
— Earth's core deprived of oxygen — The composition of the Earth's core remains a mystery. Scientists know that the liquid outer core consists mainly of iron, but it is believed that small amounts of some other elements…
— Human, artificial intelligence join forces to pinpoint fossil locations — In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis palaeoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first - and still the only - known pre-human ape ever…
— Palaeontologist describes large nest of juvenile dinosaurs, first of their genus ever found — A nest containing the fossilised remains of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaurs from Mongolia has been described by a University of Rhode Island palaeontologist, revealing…
— Researchers pinpoint date and rate of Earth's most extreme extinction — It's well known that Earth's most severe mass extinction occurred about 250 million years ago. What's not well known is the specific time when the extinctions occurred. A team of researchers…
— Archeologists investigate Ice Age hominins' adaptability to climate change — Computational modelling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights…
— Research suggests strong Indian crust thrust beneath the Tibetan Plateau — For many years, most scientists studying Tibet have thought that a very hot and very weak lower and middle crust underlies its plateau, flowing like a fluid. Now, a team of researchers…
— Did dinosaurs have lice? Researchers say it's possible — A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early - perhaps even the first - animal hosts of lice…
Tyrannosaur design evolved at 'punk size'
A new dinosaur shows that tyrannosaur design evolved at 'punk size.' The creature, Raptorex, from NE China had evolved all the hallmark anatomical features of Tyrannosaurus rex at least 125 million years ago. A paper in the 17 September issue of Science Express titled 'Tyrannosaurid Skeletal Design First Evolved at Small Body Size' by Paul Sereno and colleagues describes the newly discovered species.
Raptorex shows that tyrannosaur design evolved at 'punk size,' basically our body weight. And that's pretty staggering, because there's no other example that I can think of where an animal has been so finely designed at about 100th the size that it would eventually become,' said Sereno.
Raptorex was approximately 9 feet in length, with a large head, tiny arms and lanky feet, also with enlarged olfactory bulbs - as in T. rex - indicating a highly developed sense of smell.
Sereno, a well-known University of Chicago palaeontologist, marvels at the scalability of the tyrannosaur body type, which when sized up 90 million years ago completely dominated the predatory eco-niche in both Asia and North America until the great extinction 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
'On other continents like Africa, you have as many as three large predators living in the same areas that split among them the job of eating meat,' he said. But in Africa, the allosaurs never went extinct, as they did in North America, possibly presenting an evolutionary opportunity for Raptorex. 'We have no evidence that it was a competitive takeover,' said Sereno, 'because we have never found large tyrannosaurs and allosaurs together.'
It is interesting to mention that Henry J. Kriegstein, one of the co-authors and a private fossil collector, brought the nearly complete Raptorex skeleton to Sereno's attention after buying it from a vendor. It is expected that the fossil will be returned to a museum in Inner Mongolia, where it was illicitly excavated. Raptorex will also appear on the National Geographic Channel at 8:00 PM ET Sunday, 11 October.
Or subscribe for our Newsletter, a free e-mail publication. It is published practically every day.
New dinosaur from Utah's red rocks
Floral changes across the Triassic-Jurassic boundary linked to extensive volcanism
Volcano eruption captured by ISS crew
Earliest musical tradition documented in SW Germany