http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/17/tiny-t-rex-fossil

Yall have no idea how much I would pay for a two or three day hunting safari in Jurassic Park.

Add that to a long list of things we THINK we know about.

Sort of like a small house pet... not...  Science is so cool!

Reminds me of a Utah Raptor without the oversized foot talon.

Yep.

That thing they found just could be somebody's retarded cousin.

Let's all speculate on how these bones lived umteen million years ago.

Video Proof

....but they are the polish of the dinosaur world

100th = exaggeration.



100th the weight maybe, but if they are referring to 100th the size then the t-rex would be 270m long (almost 900ft)

So T-Rex was 270 METERS LONG?  

Somebody really sucks at math.

"Clever girl"



 

First thing that came to mind.



That's also the best part of the movie.





 

and for all we know T-Rex may not have been the ultimate expression of it's evolutionary bloodline.   There may have been even bigger t-rex like carnivores.  

 the remains of the biggest sauropods probably haven't been found yet, if ever.

What could possibly go wrong?

They all taste like chicken.  Honest.

That guy was a foreign idiot. I'm an American badass.

Indeed.

Size as in body mass.

120 lbs versus 12,000.

more importantly did this one not make it in time to board the Ark!?





 

And we are positive this wasn't simply a baby T-Rex how?

They need to stop illustrating the dinos with feathers.

Where's the Oh Snap! gif?

I fuckin love dinosaurs.

The article gives the size & weight of a typical baby T-Rex, and its MUCH larger and heavier than this.


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Apparently not.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8259902.stm


Tiny ancestor is T rex blueprint
By Judith Burns
Science reporter, BBC News



raptorex skull
The skull of raptorex is dwarfed by the skull of a full sized dinosaur

A 3m-long (10ft) dinosaur fossil is a tiny blueprint for Tyrannosaurus rex but lived 60 million years earlier and was 1/90th of the size, say scientists.

In the journal Science, Paul Sereno, from the University of Chicago, says the fossil from China displays the same features as T rex but in miniature.

The new species, Raptorex kriegsteini, would have weighed around 65kg.

Scientists believe it could be the "missing link" between earlier species of dinosaur and T rex.

The find suggests that T rex's characteristic big head with enhanced jaw, relatively small forearms and huge back legs were inherited from this much smaller dinosaur, and that the body type changed little over the millennia except in size.

Long-armed relatives

In the past 10 years, fossils from earlier and more primitive species have been discovered in rocks between 100 and 176 million years old (Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous periods) in Europe, North America and China.

In short, much of what we thought we know about tyrannosaur evolution turns out to be either simplistic or out-and-out wrong
Stephen Brusatte, American Museum of Natural History

These previous finds have confirmed that the Tyrannosaur family of dinosaurs is descended from small-bodied, long-armed predecessors.

But there has been little evidence of a direct link between these relatively small dinosaurs and the massive fossils of T Rex.

The team believes that Raptorex kriegsteini is that link. It looks identical to a big T Rex, even down to the shape of the skull with its enlarged olfactory bulbs, which would have given it the same acute sense of smell as T Rex.

Paul Sereno describes the tiny dinosaur (Video: Chicago Media Initiatives Group)

Dr Sereno said: "It's as close to the proverbial missing link on a lineage as we might ever get for T Rex.

"From the teeth to the enlarged jaw muscles, the enlarged head, the small forelimbs, the lanky, running, long hind limbs with the compressed foot for hunting prey: we see this all, to our great surprise, in an animal that is basically the body weight of a human or 1/90th the size that ultimately this lineage would reach in T Rex at the end of the Cretaceous."

Theory overturned

The team believes that the new fossil completely overturns accepted opinion on the evolution of tyrannosaurs.

Until now it had been thought that their strange body shape evolved as a consequence of their large size.

The fossil record bears out the previous theory that as tyrannosaurs developed truly giant size over time, they needed to modify their entire skeletons so they could continue to function as a predators as they grew.

According to co-author Stephen Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History in New York: "Raptorex, the new species, really throws a wrench into this observed pattern.
raptorex skeleton
The animal was entombed at the edge of a lake in north east China

"Here we have an animal that's 1/90th or 1/100th of the size of T rex, about my size, but with all the signature features - the big head, the strong muscles, the tiny little arms - that were thought to be necessary adaptations for a large body predator.

"So really we can say that these features did not evolve as a consequence of large body size but rather that they evolved as an efficient set of predatory weapons in an animal that was just 1/100th of the size of T rex and that lived 60 million years before T rex."

The fossil record tells us that tyrannosaurs only grew to huge sizes during the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous.

Dr Brusatte said: "So that means that for most of their evolutionary history, about 80% of the time that they were on Earth, tyrannosaurs were small animals that lived in the shadow of other types of very large dinosaur predators.

"In short, much of what we thought we know about tyrannosaur evolution turns out to be either simplistic or out-and-out wrong."

Fossil hunter

Dr Sereno estimates that this specimen of Raptorex kriegsteini was a young adult when it died.

The team made casts of the bones and reconstructed the animal as they believe it would have appeared. They think it would have been 1m high and that it would have had similar feathers to an ostrich.

It would have preyed on small birds and other smaller scampering animals that lived around the lake beds where it was discovered.


raptorex arm

The forearm of raptorex is a blueprint for that of an adult T Rex

The researchers say that fragments of sand and sediment on the skeleton indicate that it came from an area of northeastern China rich in fossils. It was dug up illicitly and spirited out of the country and ultimately sold.

It is named after Henry Kriegstein, a private collector, who bought it from a dealer. He contacted Dr Sereno three years ago, asked him to analyse the specimen, and agreed to give it back to science and ultimately to China. It is now in a museum in Inner Mongolia.

Mr Kriegstein is a co-author on the paper.

Dr Sereno said: "I hope this is a pathway that other important specimens will follow.

"This is more than just a Chinese specimen. It has given us some real insights into our own tyrannosaurs here in North America. So it really belongs to science. It belongs to the world."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8259902.stm


Tiny ancestor is T rex blueprint
By Judith Burns
Science reporter, BBC News



raptorex skull
The skull of raptorex is dwarfed by the skull of a full sized dinosaur

A 3m-long (10ft) dinosaur fossil is a tiny blueprint for Tyrannosaurus rex but lived 60 million years earlier and was 1/90th of the size, say scientists.

In the journal Science, Paul Sereno, from the University of Chicago, says the fossil from China displays the same features as T rex but in miniature.

The new species, Raptorex kriegsteini, would have weighed around 65kg.

Scientists believe it could be the "missing link" between earlier species of dinosaur and T rex.

The find suggests that T rex's characteristic big head with enhanced jaw, relatively small forearms and huge back legs were inherited from this much smaller dinosaur, and that the body type changed little over the millennia except in size.

Long-armed relatives

In the past 10 years, fossils from earlier and more primitive species have been discovered in rocks between 100 and 176 million years old (Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous periods) in Europe, North America and China.

In short, much of what we thought we know about tyrannosaur evolution turns out to be either simplistic or out-and-out wrong
Stephen Brusatte, American Museum of Natural History

These previous finds have confirmed that the Tyrannosaur family of dinosaurs is descended from small-bodied, long-armed predecessors.

But there has been little evidence of a direct link between these relatively small dinosaurs and the massive fossils of T Rex.

The team believes that Raptorex kriegsteini is that link. It looks identical to a big T Rex, even down to the shape of the skull with its enlarged olfactory bulbs, which would have given it the same acute sense of smell as T Rex.

Paul Sereno describes the tiny dinosaur (Video: Chicago Media Initiatives Group)

Dr Sereno said: "It's as close to the proverbial missing link on a lineage as we might ever get for T Rex.

"From the teeth to the enlarged jaw muscles, the enlarged head, the small forelimbs, the lanky, running, long hind limbs with the compressed foot for hunting prey: we see this all, to our great surprise, in an animal that is basically the body weight of a human or 1/90th the size that ultimately this lineage would reach in T Rex at the end of the Cretaceous."

Theory overturned

The team believes that the new fossil completely overturns accepted opinion on the evolution of tyrannosaurs.

Until now it had been thought that their strange body shape evolved as a consequence of their large size.

The fossil record bears out the previous theory that as tyrannosaurs developed truly giant size over time, they needed to modify their entire skeletons so they could continue to function as a predators as they grew.

According to co-author Stephen Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History in New York: "Raptorex, the new species, really throws a wrench into this observed pattern.
raptorex skeleton
The animal was entombed at the edge of a lake in north east China

"Here we have an animal that's 1/90th or 1/100th of the size of T rex, about my size, but with all the signature features - the big head, the strong muscles, the tiny little arms - that were thought to be necessary adaptations for a large body predator.

"So really we can say that these features did not evolve as a consequence of large body size but rather that they evolved as an efficient set of predatory weapons in an animal that was just 1/100th of the size of T rex and that lived 60 million years before T rex."

The fossil record tells us that tyrannosaurs only grew to huge sizes during the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous.

Dr Brusatte said: "So that means that for most of their evolutionary history, about 80% of the time that they were on Earth, tyrannosaurs were small animals that lived in the shadow of other types of very large dinosaur predators.

"In short, much of what we thought we know about tyrannosaur evolution turns out to be either simplistic or out-and-out wrong."

Fossil hunter

Dr Sereno estimates that this specimen of Raptorex kriegsteini was a young adult when it died.

The team made casts of the bones and reconstructed the animal as they believe it would have appeared. They think it would have been 1m high and that it would have had similar feathers to an ostrich.

It would have preyed on small birds and other smaller scampering animals that lived around the lake beds where it was discovered.


raptorex arm

The forearm of raptorex is a blueprint for that of an adult T Rex

The researchers say that fragments of sand and sediment on the skeleton indicate that it came from an area of northeastern China rich in fossils. It was dug up illicitly and spirited out of the country and ultimately sold.

It is named after Henry Kriegstein, a private collector, who bought it from a dealer. He contacted Dr Sereno three years ago, asked him to analyse the specimen, and agreed to give it back to science and ultimately to China. It is now in a museum in Inner Mongolia.

Mr Kriegstein is a co-author on the paper.

Dr Sereno said: "I hope this is a pathway that other important specimens will follow.

"This is more than just a Chinese specimen. It has given us some real insights into our own tyrannosaurs here in North America. So it really belongs to science. It belongs to the world."

I've always thought the feathered dino drawings look wrong.  I think they do that to push the idea that dinos evolved into modern birds.

Would Convergent Evolution come into play here?

I want my own cloned pet T-rex and I have since I was 6 years old and saw Jurassic Park.

How do we know that it wasn't a juvenile T-Rex?

Morons, it's just a baby T-rex.

Feathered dinosaurs have been found.

You were six when that come out?!  Man, I'm starting to feel old.

From a later time frame than ones like T Rex, right? Like Archaeopterix?

I saw it twice in theaters and I was about the same age. It's been one of my all time favorites ever since.

Eh, I jumped the gun a bit.  To me "size" implies dimensions, whereas "mass" or "weight" implies, well, mass.  Guess I should read the whole article first

I don't doubt it.  But have all the dinosours pictured as having feathers been found with feathers?  Why does it always seem to be the predators shown to have feathers and not a brontosaurus or some other plant eater?

Have T-Rexes been found with feathers?  The artists impression of this newfound TRex seems to think so.

A normal T-Rex is 270 meters long?

HOLY SHIT!  RUN!

That said, maybe it was just a midget. Midget T-Rex.

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the T-Rex is in the Coelurosauria clade which contains all feathered dinosaurs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelurosauria

This obviously excludes Sauropods (such as the brontosaurus)

Archaeopteryx is millions of years older than this new fossil - Upper Jurassic vs. Lower Cretaceous.


The carnivorous dinosaurs appear much more closely related to birds than do the herbivores, speaking generally.  Artist's reconstructions are guesses.  The skeletal and muscular anatomy can be known fairly well, but it's exceedingly rare, or was until the Chinese finds started coming to light in the 1990s, to find any sort of soft tissue preserved, and of course we have no idea what color they were.

I recall seeing a feathered apatosaur (long-necked sauropod) proposed in some book years and years ago.

Archeopteryx lived in the Jurassic period about 145 million years ago, earlier than T-rex which lived in the Cretaceous about 65 million years ago.



 

That's an interesting adaptation of Del Parson's work.

In the novel, he was a Great White Hunter in Africa who did safaris and managed wildlife parks before getting hired at Jurassic Park. Not only did he survive in the novel, but he was blowing up raptors with a rocket launcher.

I think I saw it at least 5 or 6 times in theaters.




 

Microraptor was supposedly around 130 million years old, which would make it older than T-Rex.  I don't know if there's anything pre-dating that.

Ah, that is interesting.  So the trait did seem to follow a specific "line" of dinosaurs.

If it already had feathewrs 60 million years before T Rex then T Rex should have been entirely covered with them and had wings to boot if evolution is to be believed. Has anyone tossed out the thought that full size T Rex's were covered in feathers yet?

We just might have the chance in the near future: