Word: raptorex
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...Chinese scientists - plus a Massachusetts ophthalmologist - have just announced the discovery of a 125 million-year-old animal that had the same distinctive build as T. rex, but at only about 1/100 the weight. "It's all there," says Sereno, "including the dinky arms." But the new dinosaur, named Raptorex kriegsteini and described in the online journal Science Express, would have been a bit taller and about as heavy as an adult human. Says Brusatte: "It really throws a wrench into the story...
...Raptorex came to light, meanwhile, is a story in itself. About three years ago, Sereno, who usually does his own fossil-hunting, was approached by ophthalmologist and avid fossil collector Henry Kriegstein for help in identifying a newly purchased specimen. Kriegstein had bought the fossil legally, but when Sereno saw it, he became convinced it was from China and that it had almost certainly been smuggled out of that country. "I told him that I'd help," says Sereno, "but only if he was willing to donate the fossil to science and let us return it to China when...
That includes the scientific community. Paleontologists aren't just interested in what dinosaurs looked and acted like; they also want to know how they fit into their environment. From what scientists already know about the ancient lake beds where Raptorex was originally found, for example, they know it had some stiff competition. "They would have co-existed with velociraptor-like dinosaurs," says Sereno - the human-scale carnivores that starred in Jurassic Park. But they would have hunted very differently: velociraptors, Sereno explains, "had long, grasping arms with clawed hands." They also had a large, sickle-shaped claw on their middle...
...Raptorex's mouth, by contrast, was most likely a primary weapon - like that of its distant descendant Tyrannosaurus. But that alone wasn't enough of an advantage to let it evolve into the predator that would ultimately dominate North America and Asia. That probably didn't happen until larger predatory dinosaurs went extinct for other reasons, say the scientists, allowing Raptorex-like creatures to begin growing. Once they started to get into the league of the big predators, though, where speed and bone-crushing jaw strength would let them range farther and crunch the bones of the biggest prey, there...
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