How Newly Discovered Tyrannosaur Relative "Prince of Dragons" Set T. rex Up to Rule
This summer's biggest movie, Jurassic World Rebirth (opening July 2, get tickets now!) picks up five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion (now streaming on Peacock!). The dinosaurs are on the loose, having reclaimed a place in the global ecosystem, but they're struggling to survive on a planet that has changed dramatically in the last 66 million years or so.
While many have died out, some have found limited success in small suitable environments around the world. Zora Bennet (Scarlett Johansson) takes a team into a secret island research facility on Ile Sant-Hubert to recover genetic materials from the largest remaining species. It's believed that the samples are the key to breakthrough medical advances. Along the way, they discover some previously unknown species including a mutant Tyrannosaur known as Distortus rex.
Here in the real world, we're stilling finding new dinos, albeit far less alive. Recently, paleontologists unveiled the fossilized remains of a new dinosaur species, Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, the closest known relative of Tyrannosaurs like the infamous T. rex.
The specimen was found in the lower Upper Cretaceous portion of the Bayanshiree Formation in southeastern Mongolia in the 1970s. From there, it went to Mongolia's Institute of Paleontology where it remained largely unexamined for the last 50 years. Paleontologists of the time identified it as Alectrosaurus, a previously known dinosaur from Asia.
In 2023, research led by University of Calgary PhD student Jared Voris and UC researcher Dr. Darla Zelenitsky revealed features which set it apart from its predatory peers. The results of that study were recently published in the journal Nature.
It dates to about 86 million years ago, a time when earlier large predators had recently gone extinct and niches were available for evolution to fill. Khankhuuluu was a medium-sized predator which answered the call. It was only about one-third or one-half the size of a fully grown T. rex, but it laid the foundation for its larger and more famous descendants.
'This new species provides us the window into the ascent stage of Tyrannosaur evolution; right when they're transitioning from small predators to their apex predator form," Voris said in a statement.
Perhaps Khankhuuluu's most notable features are a pair of tiny horns just over the eye sockets. Those horns would later evolve to be much more prominent in species like Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus. They were probably used to intimidate rivals and impress romantic interests. Long before that, however, Khankhuuluu made moves which would set up T. rex to rule prehistory.
"Khankhuuluu, or a closely related species, would have immigrated to North America from Asia around 85 million years ago," explains Zelenitsky, a paleontologist and associate professor in the Department of Earth, Energy and Environment. "Our study provides solid evidence that large Tyrannosaurs first evolved in North America as a result of this immigration event."
Twenty million years after Khankhuuluu first appeared, its descendants were dominating the Cretaceous landscape. At least until the asteroid closed the curtain on the age of dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are back in Jurassic World Rebirth, .
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