It was alway thought that Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled the world at the time of their existence. They towered several feet high and would storm around islands, having no problem stalking their smaller prey. However, the discovery of a new Tyrannosaur species may reveal that the giant T-Rexes weren’t always so big.
In Uzbekistan, archaeologists recently uncovered a new fossil of a new dinosaur.
The National Museum of Natural History paleontologist Hans-Dieter Sues, along with the help of his colleagues, dubbed the new dinosaur a Timurlengia euotica
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Sues and Alexander Averianov found bones in Uzbekistan’s desert in 2012, but though it was clear that these bones were those of a tiny tyrannosaur, they “did not have the unique features that would have allowed us to distinguish our animal from other tyrannosaurs.” They published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the 90-million-year-old rocks of the Uzbekistan desert, Sues also found a skull piece of the dinosaur. When Sues put all the pieces together, they found that it matches up with the Timurlengia species. These dinosaurs are just like the big ones that would stand tall and rule the Cretaceous… except they’re tiny.
“Timurlengia would have been a small, slender-limbed version of the ‘tyrant king,’” Sues said.
Though the dinosaurs may have been tiny, they still would be the size of a horse. These dinosaurs also had “keen sense of hearing and excellent eyesight.” They would serve as trailblazers for the giant T-Rex dinosaurs that would evolve after them.
This is a major discovery, even though the dinosaurs themselves are relatively small. Though the T-Rex dinosaurs would stand much taller than the Timurlengia, they were still much smaller than many carnivores that roamed the Earth during the Cretaceous period, according to North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences paleontologist Lindsay Zanno.
As you can see, there’s still plenty to be learned about dinosaurs, and this is only the beginning.
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