Researchers at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and N.C. State University say they have settled a long-standing debate in the field of paleontology with the discovery of a new dinosaur species.
Why it matters: On Thursday, in a new study in the science journal Nature, researchers argue that a fossil specimen in the Museum of Natural Sciences’ “Dueling Dinosaurs” exhibit is a distinct dinosaur, called the Nanotyrannus lancensis, rather than just a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
- The discovery “flips decades of T. rex research on its head,” Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the museum and a professor at N.C. State, said in a statement.
Context: The museum acquired the fossils in 2020 for $6 million and began displaying them in Raleigh in 2022.
Zoom in: The “Dueling Dinosaurs” fossils, discovered in Montana, show two dinosaurs locked in combat: one, a Triceratops, and the other a small-bodied tyrannosaur.
- For decades, paleontologists have gone back and forth on whether the small tyrannosaur was a juvenile T. rex or rather a distinct and smaller species.
- But the North Carolina-based researchers believe now the Nanotyrannus was a much smaller species of tyrannosaur that lived alongside T. rexes.
What they did: In the study, Zanno determined via the fossil’s growth rings, spinal fusion and developmental anatomy, that it was around 20 years old when it died, physically mature and biologically incompatible with a T. rex…