Tiny tyrannosaur species discovered in Mongolia
A new species of dinosaur has been discovered, which scientists say shows how tyrannosaurs evolved from smaller predators the size of a horse.
The 'Dragon Prince', whose bones were found in a Mongolian museum, is thought to be about 20 million years older than the Tyrannosaurus Rex and provides a 'missing link' in the evolution of the apex predators.
The skeleton of the Khankhuuluu Mongoliensis demonstrates where the T-Rex got its vicious bite, researchers who 'rediscovered' the species said.
'We see features in its nasal bone that eventually gave tyrannosaurs those very powerful bite forces,' said Jared Voris, from the University of Calgary, the researcher who found the bones.
The fossils were initially found in the early 1970s, but at the time were misidentified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus.
The bones were put away in a drawer at the Institute of Palaeontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar, until they were re-discovered by then-PhD student Mr Voris.
He was handed two plastic tubes full of bones while visiting the institute – and eventually found the fossils were partial skeletons of two different dinosaurs from a new species.
Darla Zelenitsky, a palaeontologist from the University of Calgary, said: 'It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognised.'
The skeleton shows that the 'Dragon Prince' was about four metres long and weighed only 750kg, according to the findings, published in the academic journal Nature.
An adult T-Rex is believed to have weighed eight times as much.
'They were these really small, fleet-footed predators that lived in the shadows of other apex predatory dinosaurs,' said Dr Voris.
'This discovery shows us that, before tyrannosaurs became the kings, they were princes,' said Zelenitsky.
The finding is considered a 'transitional' fossil and has helped clarify the evolution of the tyrannosaur family, which was 'really messy previously,' said Dr Zelenitsky.
'What makes them so important is their age,' said Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study. 'They are about 86 million years old, a good 20 million years older than T-Rex. It has been a frustrating gap in the record.'
The discovery also helps to paint the migration patterns of the tyrannosaurs.
They show that T-Rex's direct ancestors probably migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge that used to connect Siberia and Alaska 85 million years ago, Dr Zelenitsky said.
Tyrannosaurs then evolved in North America and remained there for the next several million years, she said.
'As the many tyrannosaur species evolved on the continent, they became larger and larger,' said Dr Zelenitsky.
The records are incomplete so scientists are unsure of what happened in Asia 80 million years ago. However, the Khankhuuluu may have later been replaced by larger, more dominant, tyrannosaurs.
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Scientific American
8 hours ago
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These Hamster Dads Are a Cut above the Rest
This Father's Day, we're celebrating the unusually involved Djungarian hamsters dads By edited by Fonda Mwangi Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Parental care is costly. It uses up precious time, energy and resources—and in the animal world, it's usually the moms who bear the brunt of it. For most mammals, the concept of fatherhood begins and ends at conception. So what drives a father to defy evolutionary norms? Today's episode celebrates the superparent skills of a surprising—and adorable—little critter. Our guide for this Father's Day Friday Fascination is Elah Feder, a freelance audio producer, editor and journalist. Here's Elah now. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Elah Feder: In mammals, good dads are the exception. Male leopards, bears, orcas—they have a habit of toddling off after mating and leaving the mothers to raise the kids. So when you come across a mammal species with active, doting dads—dads who actually matter for their kids' survival—you pay attention. And one of the most extreme cases of good fatherhood can be found in a dwarf hamster that lives in the cold, dry semideserts of Russia, China and Mongolia: Phodopus campbelli, aka the Djungarian hamster. Campbelli males and females raise their kids in burrows underground. And when the first litter of pups arrive, the dads get to work right away. Katherine Wynne-Edwards: They will be very close by during the birth. Feder: Katherine Wynne-Edwards is a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary [in Alberta]. It took her a while to figure out exactly what these male hamsters were doing. But then she saw it: they were acting as midwives, physically delivering the babies. 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And what was immediately obvious was that they were stacked with adaptations for cold weather—adaptations that happened to make them extra cute. Wynne-Edwards: Let's be honest: they look like a windup toy. They're fluffy; they're really remarkably spherical; their tail is very short and barely protrudes from the rest of their fur. Their ears are relatively short and actually do even have hair on them, which many rodents don't, um, and can be folded down. Feder: All great ways to conserve heat in a place where temperatures can drop as low as –50 degrees Celsius [–58 degrees Fahrenheit]. But what made these hamsters really interesting was this biparental care—with both mother and father involved in raising the kids. Make no mistake—the mother is still doing the heavy lifting. She nurses the pups, which means giving up precious water and nutrients, but the father will take turns sitting on the pups, keeping them warm, returning them to the nest if they wander off. And when the mother weans them, the father is the one who sticks around for a few more days and feeds them seeds from his cheek pouches so they don't go wandering off from the burrow before they're ready. And the question is: Why? Most mammals—in fact, most animals in general—grow up just fine without dads. Nick Royle: Most care across different taxa is female-only care. Feder: Nick Royle is an associate professor of behavioral and evolutionary ecology at the University of Exeter in England. He says if we look beyond mammals, lots of animals don't have maternal care either. When the kids hatch, they're on their own. Royle: Parental care in general is quite rare. So only 3 percent of reptile families have parental care, for example. It's rare in invertebrates, but it is quite well developed, obviously, in things like ants and termites and beetles. Feder: From an evolutionary perspective, if you can make some offspring, and they thrive with no help from you, that's a win. 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Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Scientists discover ‘dragon prince' dinosaur, the T. Rex's missing ancestor
Tyrannosaurus rex is a carnivorous icon. Exceeding 40 feet in length and nine tons, the bone-crushing giant stands out as the largest and last of its meat-eating family. Now a new and far smaller tyrannosaur is filling in the famous dinosaur's evolutionary backstory. The newest addition to the tyrannosaur family tree is named Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which translates to 'dragon prince from Mongolia.' Described this week in the journal Nature, the dinosaur has been identified for the first time from two partial skeletons that include skull bones, vertebrae, part of the hips, and limb bones. Altogether, the pieces reveal a slender tyrannosaur that roamed Cretaceous Mongolia about 86 million years ago and was about 13 feet long—or about the size of juvenile T. rex that would stalk North America 20 million years later. In fact, Khankhuuluu even looked like a juvenile of later, larger tyrannosaurs, with round eye sockets, blade-like teeth, and long, shallow jaws better suited to biting fast rather than hard. (T. rex had lips, upending its enduring pop culture image.) Khankhuuluu does more than simply add another dinosaur to the ever-growing roster of dinosaurs. 'Khankhuuluu gives us the origin story of tyrannosaurs,' says University of Calgary paleontologist and study co-author Darla Zelenitsky. In the early 1970s, Mongolian paleontologist Altangerel Perle found a pair of partial tyrannosaur skeletons in the eastern part of the country. The bones seemed similar to a small tyrannosaur that had been named before, Alectrosaurus. But when University of Calgary paleontologist and study co-author Jared Voris studied the bones during a research trip to Mongolia in 2023, he soon realized that the bones did not belong to Alectrosaurus at all. The bones from the two skeletons belonged to a new form of tyrannosaur that had been waiting to be discovered in collections for half a century. 'It had features like a hollow air chamber in side its nasal bone, which no other tyrannosaur species has,' Voris says. The fossils deserved a new name and have been recategorized as Khankhuuluu. Voris has found tyrannosaurs hiding in plain sight before. In 2020, Voris and colleagues named the 80 million-year-old tyrannosaur Thanatotheristes from bones assigned to another species found in Alberta. ("Reaper of Death" tyrannosaur discovered in Canada.) The finds are part of a burgeoning array of tyrannosaur discoveries. Instead of a simple line of evolution from early tyrannosaurs to T. rex, paleontologists have uncovered a wildly branching evolutionary bush of different tyrannosaur subgroups that came and went through the Cretaceous. The glut of new tyrannosaur species is allowing experts to piece together how big tyrannosaurs, including the gigantic T. rex, evolved and spread across vast stretches of the planet. When compared to other tyrannosaurs, the researchers found that Khankhuuluu is a close relative of the broader group of tyrannosaurs that include Gorgosaurus from Alberta, the bumpy-snouted Alioramus from Mongolia, and the iconic T. rex. The new family tree, as well as where the fossils were uncovered, create an updated picture of how tyrannosaurs evolved over 20 million years.'It is a pivotal species in understanding the evolutionary success of T. rex and its relatives,' says University College London paleontologist Cassius Morrison, who was not involved in the new study. In particular, the new analysis reveals how tyrannosaurs evolved into many different species as the carnivores wandered into new around the time of Khankhuuluu, Voris and colleagues propose, such small, slender tyrannosaurs were dispersing from prehistoric Asia into North America over a land bridge. 'Tyrannosaurs evolved into those giant apex predators and diversified very rapidly across North America,' Voris says, the first of what Zelenitsky calls 'two explosions of tyrannosaurs.' Some of the predators remained slender and chased smaller prey while others became bulkier and hunted larger dinosaurs, and they roamed habitats from southern California to New Jersey. (See how these fierce dinos evolved in our pages over 100 years.) The new study suggests, however, that the direct ancestors of T. rex, did not evolve in North America. Voris and colleagues propose that around 79 and 78 million years ago at least one lineage of tyrannosaurs ventured back into Asia. The researchers know this because of the close relationship of two tyrannosaur groups that at a glance might seem very different. When tyrannosaurs returned to Asia during this period and underwent their second explosion, one group was relatively slender and had long snouts decorated with small horns, like the 'Pinocchio' dinosaur Qianzhousaurus. The other group began to grow larger, with deep skulls adept at crushing bones, like Tarbosaurus. T. rex evolved from ancestors in the second group, a lineage of bone-crushers that once again crossed the land bridge back into North America between 73 and 67 million years ago—making T. rex a new form of predator that arrived from another continent. 'The new analysis provides strong support that the ancestors of T. rex evolved from a group of tyrannosaurs that ventured back to Asia after they had undergone an evolutionary radiation in North America,' Morrison says. Ultimately, the study suggests that the rise of one of Earth's largest carnivores was due to a back-and-forth between North America and Asia that took place over a period of 20 million years. Had a devastating asteroid impact not abruptly ended the Cretaceous 66 million years ago, tyrannosaurs would have undoubtedly kept changing.
