Meet T. rex’s tiny tyrant cousin
16-year-old discovered fossil of little lizard
Sure, we’ve all seen the monstrous T. rexes running amok in “Jurassic Park” and other movies.
It turns out they weren’t all huge behemoths: In a study published Monday, scientists announced the discovery of a new relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex, one that was much smaller than the gigantic, ferocious dinosaurs made famous in countless books and films.
The dinosaur, which roamed the
Earth about 92 million years ago, stood roughly 3 feet tall and was about 9 feet in length, according to the study.
It weighed somewhere in the 45- to 90-pound range, certainly modest by dinosaur standards and a tiny fraction of the 9-ton adult T. rex.
The discovery itself has a fascinating backstory: The fossil was found more than 20 years ago by Sterling Nesbitt, who went on to become a Virginia Tech University paleontologist and the lead author of the new study. Nesbitt was 16 when he discovered the fossil during a high school dig trip in the Zuni Basin of western New Mexico.
That single find “put me onto a scientific journey that has framed my career,” he said. This includes several advanced degrees in paleontology.
The fossil was given the name Suskityrannus hazelae. The first word is derived from “Suski,” the Zuni Native American tribe word for “coyote,” and from the Latin word “tyrannus,” meaning king. The second word “hazelae” is named for Hazel Wolfe, whose support made possible many successful fossil expeditions in the Zuni Basin, according to Nesbitt.
Though not the first or even smallest of the Tyrannosaurus family tree, “Suskityrannus gives us a glimpse into the evolution of tyrannosaurs just before they take over the planet,” Nesbitt said.
At first, scientists didn’t know they had a cousin of the T. rex and thought it was something more in line with a velociraptor, small but vicious dinos that also became famous in “Jurassic Park.”
Smithsonian Institution paleobiologist Hans Sues, who wasn’t part of the study, said it’s an important find. “Suskityrannus is the first really good record of the early tyrannosaurs in North America,” he said.
The study was published Monday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.