Scientific understanding of T. rex revised by a decade of new research and discovery
We've all heard this story: the Late Cretaceous of Asia and North America - about 65 million years ago - was dominated by several large-headed, bipedal predatory dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus that had tiny arms. But a decade of new fossil discoveries that have more than doubled the number of known tyrannosaur species has changed this tale. Older and smaller tyrannosaurs have made the evolutionary tree of this group richer and more complex. Furthermore, a series of innovative research projects on topics like bone growth and biomechanics have added an enormous amount of information about tyrannosaurs, so much so that the group could now be considered an exemplar for studying many themes in palaeontology research. A new paper describing recent research and a new evolutionary tree is published in Science this week...