Washington: A remarkable new species of tyrannosaur has been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM), southern Utah, which has provided new clues to the evolution of T.rex.
The huge carnivore inhabited Laramidia, a landmass formed on the western coast of a shallow sea that flooded the central region of North America, isolating western and eastern portions of the continent for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 95-70 million years ago.
Among tyrannosaurs, a group of small to large-bodied, bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs including T. Rex that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, the newly discovered species, Lythronax argestes, possesses several unique features, a short narrow snout with a wide back of the skull with forward-oriented eyes.
Lythronax translates as "king of gore," and the second part of the name, argestes, refers to its geographic location in the American Southwest. Previously, paleontologists thought this type of wide-skulled tyrannosaurid only appeared 70 million years ago, whereas Lythronax shows it had evolved at least 10 million years earlier.
Lythronax lived on Laramidia, along the western shores of the great seaway that separated North America; this landmass hosted a vast array of unique dinosaur species and served as the crucible of evolution for iconic dinosaur groups such as the horned and duck billed dinosaurs.
This study also indicates that tyrannosaurid dinosaurs (the group of tyrannosaurs that includes T. Rex) likely evolved in isolation on this island continent. Lythronax stands out from its contemporaries in having a much wider skull at the eyes and a narrow short snout, similar to its relative T. Rex, which lived 10-12 million years later.
The study has been published in the journal PLOS ONE.
