New species of tiny tyrannosaurs gave Rex its bite
A new species of dinosaur has been discovered, which scientists say shows how tyrannosaurs evolved from smaller predators the size of a horse.
The 'Dragon Prince', whose bones were found in a Mongolian museum, is thought to be about 20 million years older than the Tyrannosaurus Rex and provides a 'missing link' in the evolution of the apex predators.
The skeleton of the Khankhuuluu Mongoliensis demonstrates where the T Rex got its vicious bite, researchers who 'rediscovered' the species said.
'We see features in its nasal bone that eventually gave tyrannosaurs those very powerful bite forces,' said Jared Voris, from the University of Calgary, the researcher who found the bones.
The fossils were initially found in the early 1970s, but at the time were misidentified as belonging to a different tyrannosaur, Alectrosaurus.
The bones were put away in a drawer at the Institute of Palaeontology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in the capital Ulaanbaatar, until they were re-discovered by then-PhD student Mr Voris.
He was handed two plastic tubes full of bones while visiting the institute – and eventually found the fossils were partial skeletons of two different dinosaurs from a new species.
Darla Zelenitsky, a palaeontologist from the University of Calgary, said: 'It is quite possible that discoveries like this are sitting in other museums that just have not been recognised.'
The skeleton shows that the 'Dragon Prince' was about four metres long and weighed only 750kg, according to the findings, published in the academic journal Nature.
An adult T Rex is believed to have weighed eight times as much.
'They were these really small, fleet-footed predators that lived in the shadows of other apex predatory dinosaurs,' said Dr Voris.
'This discovery shows us that, before tyrannosaurs became the kings, they were princes,' said Zelenitsky.
The finding is considered a 'transitional' fossil and has helped clarify the evolution of the tyrannosaur family, which was 'really messy previously,' said Dr Zelenitsky.
'What makes them so important is their age,' said Stephen Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study. 'They are about 86 million years old, a good 20 million years older than T Rex. It has been a frustrating gap in the record.'
The discovery also helps to paint the migration patterns of the tyrannosaurs.
From Asia to North America
They show that T Rex's direct ancestors probably migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge that used to connect Siberia and Alaska 85 million years ago, Dr Zelenitsky said.
Tyrannosaurs then evolved in North America and remained there for the next several million years, she said.
'As the many tyrannosaur species evolved on the continent, they became larger and larger,' said Dr Zelenitsky.
The records are incomplete so scientists are unsure of what happened in Asia 80 million years ago. However, the Khankhuuluu may have later been replaced by larger, more dominant, tyrannosaurs.
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Later studies by doctors in the 1970s provided further evidence of this, and they proposed using the immersion of the hands in water as a simple bedside test to assess nerve damage that might affect the regulation of unconscious processes such as blood flow. Then in 2003, neurologists Einar Wilder-Smith and Adeline Chow, who were working at the National University Hospital in Singapore at the time, took measurements of blood circulation in the hands of volunteers as they soaked them in water. They found that as the skin on the volunteers' fingertips began to wrinkle, there was a significant drop in blood flow in the fingers. When they applied a local anesthetic cream that caused the blood vessels in the fingers of healthy volunteers to temporarily constrict, they found it produced similar levels of wrinkling as water immersion. 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More like this: There have also been suggestions that the outer layers of skin may also swell a little to enhance the wrinkling. By osmosis alone, however, our skin would need to swell by 20% to achieve the wrinkles we see in our fingers, which would leave them hideously enlarged. But when the upper layers of skin swell slightly and the lower levels shrink at the same time, the wrinkling becomes pronounced far sooner, says Pablo Saez Viñas, a biomechanical engineer at the Technical University of Catalonia, who has used computer modelling to examine the mechanism. "You need both to have normal levels of wrinkles," he says. "If you don't have that neurological response, which happens in some individuals, wrinkles are inhibited." But if wrinkling is controlled by our nerves, it means our bodies are actively reacting to being in water. "That means it is happening for a reason," says Davis. "And that means it could be giving us an advantage." Why did our fingers evolve to wrinkle in water? 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So, while the question of why our fingers and toes began wrinkling in water in the first place remains open, our pruney digits are proving useful to doctors in other surprising ways. * This article was originally published on 21 June 2022. It was updated on 19 June 2025 to include details of a new study on the repeatability of wrinkle patterns on wet fingers. -- If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more science, technology, environment and health stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
