Latest news with #InstituteOfPaleontology
The Australian
a day ago
- Science
- The Australian
New T-Rex ancestor discovered in drawers of Mongolian institute
Misidentified bones that languished in the drawers of a Mongolian institute for 50 years belong to a new species of tyrannosaur that rewrites the family history of the mighty T-Rex, scientists said Wednesday. This slender ancestor of the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex was around four metres (13 feet) long and weighed three quarters of a tonne, according to a new study in the journal Nature. "It would have been the size of a very large horse," study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of Canada's University of Calgary told AFP. The fossils were first dug up in southeastern Mongolia in the early 1970s but at the time were identified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus. For half a century, the fossils sat in the drawers at the Institute of Paleontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar. Then PhD student Jared Voris, who was on a trip to Mongolia, started looking through the drawers and noticed something was wrong, Zelenitsky said. It turned out the fossils were well-preserved, partial skeletons of two different individuals of a completely new species. "It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognised," Zelenitsky added. - 'Messy' family history - They named the new species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which roughly means the dragon prince of Mongolia because it is smaller than the "king" T-Rex. Zelenitsky said the discovery "helped us clarify a lot about the family history of the tyrannosaur group because it was really messy previously". The T-Rex represented the end of the family line. It was the apex predator in North America until 66 million years ago, when an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. Three quarters of life on Earth was wiped out, including all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds. Around 20 million years earlier, Khankhuuluu -- or another closely related family member -- is now believed to have migrated from Asia to North America using the land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska. This led to tyrannosaurs evolving across North America. Then one of these species is thought to have crossed back over to Asia, where two tyrannosaur subgroups emerged. One was much smaller, weighing under a tonne, and was nicknamed Pinocchio rex for its long snout. The other subgroup was huge and included behemoths like the Tarbosaurus, which was only a little smaller than the T-rex. One of the gigantic dinosaurs then left Asia again for North America, eventually giving rise to the T-Rex, which dominated for just two million years -- until the asteroid struck. dl/gil
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Science
- News.com.au
New T-Rex ancestor discovered in drawers of Mongolian institute
Misidentified bones that languished in the drawers of a Mongolian institute for 50 years belong to a new species of tyrannosaur that rewrites the family history of the mighty T-Rex, scientists said Wednesday. This slender ancestor of the massive Tyrannosaurus Rex was around four metres (13 feet) long and weighed three quarters of a tonne, according to a new study in the journal Nature. "It would have been the size of a very large horse," study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of Canada's University of Calgary told AFP. The fossils were first dug up in southeastern Mongolia in the early 1970s but at the time were identified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus. For half a century, the fossils sat in the drawers at the Institute of Paleontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar. Then PhD student Jared Voris, who was on a trip to Mongolia, started looking through the drawers and noticed something was wrong, Zelenitsky said. It turned out the fossils were well-preserved, partial skeletons of two different individuals of a completely new species. "It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognised," Zelenitsky added. - 'Messy' family history - They named the new species Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, which roughly means the dragon prince of Mongolia because it is smaller than the "king" T-Rex. Zelenitsky said the discovery "helped us clarify a lot about the family history of the tyrannosaur group because it was really messy previously". The T-Rex represented the end of the family line. It was the apex predator in North America until 66 million years ago, when an asteroid bigger than Mount Everest slammed into the Gulf of Mexico. Three quarters of life on Earth was wiped out, including all the dinosaurs that did not evolve into birds. Around 20 million years earlier, Khankhuuluu -- or another closely related family member -- is now believed to have migrated from Asia to North America using the land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska. This led to tyrannosaurs evolving across North America. Then one of these species is thought to have crossed back over to Asia, where two tyrannosaur subgroups emerged. One was much smaller, weighing under a tonne, and was nicknamed Pinocchio rex for its long snout. The other subgroup was huge and included behemoths like the Tarbosaurus, which was only a little smaller than the T-rex. One of the gigantic dinosaurs then left Asia again for North America, eventually giving rise to the T-Rex, which dominated for just two million years -- until the asteroid struck. dl/gil
Globe and Mail
2 days ago
- Science
- Globe and Mail
Meet the Dragon Prince, the ‘missing link' in the T-rex's family tree
When Jared Voris was handed two plastic tubs full of dinosaur bones at Mongolia's Institute of Paleontology in 2023, he thought they might contain something interesting. But within minutes of picking up a partial skull, the University of Calgary doctoral student knew he had come across something new and unexpected. 'I've studied tyrannosaur anatomy for years and immediately I thought, 'this looks like a juvenile tyrannosaur,'' Mr. Voris said. But the more he examined the specimen, the more he realized its features were unlike any tyrannosaur seen before, young or old. It was his first encounter with the Dragon Prince. Two years later, that chance discovery and its significance in the timeline of dinosaur evolution are documented in a research study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Now called Khankhuuluu mongoliensis – from the Mongolian word 'khankhuu' for prince and 'luu' for dragon – the specimen has indeed turned out to be a tyrannosaur, but one of modest stature that predates by several million years its giant relatives, including the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex. 'Those are the large meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on two legs, with puny arms and massive skulls,' said Darla Zelenitsky, a professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary. 'Khankhuuluu is like the immediate ancestor to that. It's also sort of the missing link.' In other words, the Dragon Prince is no lizard king, but it may represent the foundation of the famous tyrannosaur lineage. In their study, the Calgary team suggests it is Khankhuuluu or something very much like it that first dispersed from Asia to North America some 90 million years ago, thereby setting the stage for the emergence of the most remarkable and terrifying group of apex predators the world has ever known. If this picture is correct, it helps to clarify the murky and geographically convoluted beginnings of tyrannosaurs. Before Khankhuuluu, early predecessors of the group were relatively tiny, perhaps weighing in at a couple of hundred kilograms – heavier than an adult human but far lighter than an adult cow. In comparison, the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex specimen has been estimated to weigh over nine tonnes. Khankhuuluu fits in the middle of the range, with a body weight of about 750 kilograms, Dr. Zelenitsky said. When creatures of this size first made it to North America, via a late Cretaceous period version of the Bering land bridge, the group found a new territory ripe for domination. In the scenario proposed by the Calgary team, tyrannosaurs then diversified rapidly, after which some members returned to Asia and got much bigger. Then, about 70 million years ago, a third and final dispersal back to North America gave rise to T. rex. None of this was on the radar when Dr. Zelenitsky first sent Mr. Voris to Mongolia to study the evolution of tyrannosaurs as part of his PhD project. The institute in Ulan Bator is known for its trove of fossils collected in the Gobi Desert over many decades. 'It's just filled with dinosaur bones,' said Mr. Voris, who said he went with a long list of items he hoped to look at during this trip. The two specimens that would prove to be members of the Khankhuuluu species had been found in the early 1970s and originally catalogued as belonging to a different branch of dinosaur predators called Alectrosaurus. While various researchers have since noted there might be something unusual about the specimens, their true identity as tyrannosaurs was not revealed until Mr. Voris inspected the remains. Among the first clues that he was looking at an early tyrannosaur was a large hollow nasal cavity that is filled in with solid bone in later members of the group as they became heavier and more reliant on their ability to deliver crushing bites to large prey. Mr. Voris quickly texted Dr. Zelenitsky in Calgary, who said her first reaction to the idea that something so important had been overlooked for more than half a century was one of caution. 'I said, 'make sure you check, and double check and triple check,'' she said. 'Of course he did, and it was something new.' Jordan Mallon, a paleobiologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa who was not involved in the work, said a key aspect of the find is having information about a tyrannosaur that lived well before the group acquired many of its signature characteristics. 'How did a small, ancestral tyrannosaur develop into the big-headed, tiny-armed behemoth that is T. rex? This new animal bears directly on the question," Dr. Mallon said. While dinosaurs are a subject of widespread public fascination, nothing can top the star power of a full-sized tyrannosaur in science fiction stories and films. Mr. Voris, who is set to defend his PhD dissertation next week, said that while for dinosaur fans it might be exciting to have something new to say about the predators, his own interest in the group is less about their reputation than the chance to peer into Earth's evolutionary past in granular detail. 'The thing that's really cool to me about tyrannosaurs is that because we have such a great record of them, we can piece together stories like this that draw connections from multiple fields of biology. That's more difficult to do with other fossil data.'
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Science
- Washington Post
Ancient T. rex ancestor discovered: Khankhuuluu, ‘prince of dragons'
A new species of early tyrannosaur, dubbed the 'prince of dragons,' has been discovered lurking in a collection of fossils first excavated in Mongolia in the early 1970s, scientists said Wednesday in the journal Nature. Khankhuuluu mongoliensis — its scientific name — is an evolutionary ancestor of the most famous tyrannosaur, the 'tyrant lizard king,' T. rex. With their bone-crushing bites and spindly little arms, large tyrannosaurs (scientifically known as 'eutyrannosaurians') are the celebrities of the dinosaur world. But they started off as small-bodied tyrannosauroids some 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period. It wasn't until the late Cretaceous that they began evolving into the giants that ignite people's imaginations. Their precise evolutionary origins, however, have long been murky. A critical swath of the family tree is blank. Khankhuuluu, known from two partial skeletons in fossil collections at the Institute of Paleontology in Mongolia, helps fill in this gap — a transitional 86 million-year-old species that represents the closest known ancestor to the famed late tyrannosaurs. Previously, it had been described as an alectrosaurus, another early tyrannosaur. Asked for a modern-day comparison, University of Calgary graduate student Jared Voris, who led the work, said to imagine a large, predatory horse. 'What makes them so important is their age,' said Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist 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.' Voris was on a research trip in Mongolia in 2023 when he sent a text halfway across the world to his adviser, Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor of paleontology. He told her that he thought some of the fossils he had examined in a museum collection were actually a new species. Those specimens had been classified for decades as alectrosaurus, 'an enigmatic and poorly represented tyrannosauroid species,' Zelenitsky and Voris wrote in their study. What leaped out to Voris initially was that the snout bone was hollow, a clear sign that this was an early ancestor of the tyrannosaur family. It was the first of what would come to be dozens of features that suggested this creature was something new. Zelenitsky, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary, said she was excited but cautioned Voris to take his time. Some bones were sent to Japan, where the research team was able to conduct CT scans to study them in greater detail. The scientists also traveled to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to study alectrosaurus fossils to make sure the animals they were researching were distinct. 'There's no doubt this is a new species,' Zelenitsky said. 'There's also no doubt that it's the ancestor to these large apex predator tyrannosaurs.' The new study reveals an intermediate form — a slender, relatively flat-snouted creature. Other tyrannosaur experts said it was good to see these specimens reexamined with modern techniques and understanding. Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland, recalled that in the 1980s, the find in Mongolia was relatively famous within the small community of tyrannosaur specialists. He was the envy of colleagues back then, because he had been able to hunt down a blurry microfiche of the paper, published in an obscure Mongolian geologic journal in the 1970s. 'It helps fill in a gap in time and in the evolutionary tree,' Holtz said. Khankhuuluu is part of a gold rush in discoveries that are filling in more chapters of tyrannosaur evolution. Over the past 15 years, there has been an explosion in discoveries of tyrannosaur species, said Joseph Sertich, a vertebrate paleontologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Sometimes, new species come to light by dusting off old fossils and finding ones that were misclassified in museum collections, as in the new study. Other times, scientists dig up new bones. Voris and Zelenitsky paint a picture of species evolution and migration as tyrannosaurs dispersed between Asia and North America over millions of years. Khankhuuluu, or another closely related species, left Asia and moved into North America, giving rise to tyrannosaurs there around 85 million years ago. Several million years later, a migration back to Asia resulted in two new branches of the tyrannosaur family tree: the giants on one branch and the 'Pinocchio rexes' — smaller dinosaurs with long, slender snouts — on the other. And at the very end of tyrannosaur evolution, one of the giants migrated back to North America, giving rise to T. rex. Sertich drew the analogy to big cats, where many species can live alongside one another — leopards, lions or tigers coexisting as predators in the ecosystem. 'The patterns of evolution we are uncovering are revealing a complex story of evolution that goes far beyond tyrant dinosaurs and has bearing on the origins of the modern ecosystems of the Northern Hemisphere,' Sertich said. 'Ultimately, this paper is exploring the ancient connections between North America and Asia, two continents that have shared species, including humans, for the past 90 million years.'
