Scientists have discovered a new species of tiny tyrannosaur which helps explain how the dinosaurs evolved from small, speedy hunters, into the bone-crushing apex predators that we know.
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The species called Moros intrepidus is a small tyrannosaur who lived about 96 million years ago in the present-day Utah, United States during the Cretaceous period.
The tyrannosaur, described in the journal Communications Biology, is the oldest Cretaceous tyrannosaur species yet discovered in North America, narrowing a 70-million-year gap in the fossil record of dinosaurs on the continent.
Early in their evolution, tyrannosaurs hunted in the shadows of archaic lineages such as allosaurs that were already established at the top of the food chain.
Moros is tiny by comparison -- standing only three or four feet tall at the hip, about the size of a modern mule deer.
The bones of Moros also revealed the origin of T rex's lineage on the North American continent. When the scientists placed Moros within the family tree of tyrannosaurs, they discovered that its closest relatives were from Asia.
The research suggests that Moros was part of a transcontinental exchange of biota between Asia and North America during the mid-Cretaceous that is well-documented in other taxa.
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