Tag Archives: t rex

T. rex: Flexibler Kopf

Fleischfressender Dinosaurier besaß einzigartigen Schädel

Senckenberg-Wissenschaftler Ingmar Werneburg hat mit einem internationalen Team erstmalig die Schädelkonstruktion des Tyrannosaurus rex untersucht.  Mit Hilfe einer “Anatomischen Netzwerk Analyse” zeigen sie in ihrer heute im Fachjournal “Scientific Reports” erschienenen Studie, dass die Schädelstruktur des fleischfressenden Dinosauriers sehr komplex war. Verschiedene Knochenmodule führten zu einer Flexibilität des Schnauzenteils, welche beim Zerlegen von Beutetieren hilfreich war.  (more…)

Read More

Massive hunter prowled water’s edge

UChicago collaboration unveils African dinosaur Spinosaurus, 9 feet longer than T. rex

Scientists have unveiled what appears to be the first truly semiaquatic dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. New fossils of the massive Cretaceous-era predator reveal it adapted to life in the water some 95 million years ago, providing the most compelling evidence to date of a dinosaur able to live and hunt in an aquatic environment. (more…)

Read More

Were Dinosaurs Cold-Blooded or Warm-Blooded? Neither, Study Finds

A study that originated in the lab of UA biologist Brian J. Enquist with UA alum John Grady suggests dinosaurs had a metabolism that was neither warm- nor cold-blooded, but somewhere in between.

Dinosaurs dominated the Earth for more than 100 million years, but all that remains today are bones. This has made it difficult to solve a long-standing and contentious puzzle: Were dinosaurs cold-blooded animals that lumbered along or swift warm-blooded creatures like those depicted in “Jurassic Park”?  (more…)

Read More

Piranha Kin Wielded Dental Weaponry Even T. Rex Would Have Admired

Taking into consideration its size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with a force more fierce than prehistoric whale-eating sharks, the four-ton ocean-dwelling Dunkleosteus terrelli and – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.

Besides the force of the bite, Megapiranha paranensis appears to have had teeth capable of shearing through soft tissue the way today’s piranhas do, while also being able to pierce thick shells and crack armoring and bones, according to Stephanie Crofts, a University of Washington doctoral student in biology. (more…)

Read More

Asteroid that Killed the Dinosaurs also Wiped out the ‘Obamadon’

The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis.

“The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study. “But it basically cut this broad swath across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.” (more…)

Read More

From a Few Bones, the Most Primitive Snake Emerges

Researchers at Yale have identified an ancient slithering creature from the time of T. rex as the most primitive known snake, a finding with implications for the debate over snake origins.

“It’s the missing-link snake,” said Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Geology & Geophysics and the lead author of a paper about the lizard-like snake published July 25 online in the journal Nature. “It’s the ‘Lucy’ of snakes.”

The paper argues that snakes descend from terrestrial rather than marine ancestors, as recently proposed by others, and that snakes emerged once lizards developed long, limbless bodies for burrowing. (more…)

Read More

What Did T. Rex Eat? Each Other.

T. rex was the only big carnivore in western North America 65 million years ago that was capable of making such large gouges. Image credit: Nicholas Longrich

It turns out that the undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex, didn’t just eat other dinosaurs but also each other. Paleontologists from the United States and Canada have found bite marks on the giants’ bones that were made by other T. rex, according to a new study published online Oct. 15 in the journal PLoS ONE.

While searching through dinosaur fossil collections for another study on dinosaur bones with mammal tooth marks, Yale researcher Nick Longrich discovered a bone with especially large gouges in them. Given the age and location of the fossil, the marks had to be made by T. rex, Longrich said. “They’re the kind of marks that any big carnivore could have made, but T. rex was the only big carnivore in western North America 65 million years ago.” (more…)

Read More