Who would have thought a Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed in Alaska?
Scientists recently came across bone fossils and pieces which look like the dinosaur species in the northern region of Alaska NBC News reported Thursday.
"The pygmy tyrannosaur alone is really cool because it tells us something about what the environment was like in the ancient Arctic," Anthony Fiorillo study researcher at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas told NBC News. "But what makes this discovery even more exciting is that Nanuqsaurus hoglundi also tells us about the biological richness of the ancient polar world during a time when the Earth was very warm compared to today, Fiorillo told NBC News.
According to ecanadanow, an average T-Rex measures 152.4 centimeters or 60 inches which is exactly like mouth, maxilla, and inner top of the dinosaur's head, but different from the rest of its body, and therefore resemblance of a lesser species named Nanuqsaurus hoglundi. Also known as a pygmy tyrannosaur.
Scientists discovered the dinosaur fossil in 2006 after seeing some bone pieces of a skull on the North slope of Alaska at Kikak Tegoseak Quarry, which sits further inland away from Prudhoe Bay NBC News reported.
Scientists initially thought the find were those of a separate tyrannosaurid dinosaur named Gorgosaurus libratus. However, the species was actually 70 million years old and more similar to the Albertosaurus Sarcophagus, but the answer to evolution, and geographic questions that still needed answers NBC News reported.
The information is printed in the Public Library of Science's One Science Journal.
"We feel pretty confident that this pygmy tyrannosaur was eating the herbivorous dinosaurs around at the time. Such discoveries shed new light on what life might have been like in the prehistoric Arctic. By seeing tooth marks, it makes them the animals that they really were instead of just a cool collection of objects," Fiorillo told History.com.
