Baby tyrannosaurs were ‘ready to hunt’
WASHINGTON: Scientists for the first time have found embryonic remains from the group of ferocious meateating dinosaurs that includes Tyrannosaurus rex
— fossilised jaw and claw bones that show these recordsize babies looked a lot like adults and were ‘‘born ready’’ to hunt.
Researchers yesterday said the fossils represented two species from the group called tyrannosaurs, the apex predators in Asia and North America during the Cretaceous Period towards the end of the dinosaur age.
The bones indicated these were bigger than any other known dinosaur babies — 1m long, or the size of a medium dog — and hatched from what must have been enormous eggs, perhaps exceeding the 43cm length of the largest dinosaur eggs currently known.
The roughly 77 millionyearold jawbone, about 3cm in length, was unearthed in Montana and may belong to a species called Daspletosaurus. The roughly 72 millionyearold wedgeshaped claw came from Canada’s
Alberta province and may belong to a species called Albertosaurus.
Both are slightly smaller cousins of T. rex.
The largestknown tyrannosaurs topped 12m long and 8 tonnes in weight.
The jaw possesses distinctive tyrannosaur traits, including a deep groove inside and a prominent chin.
University of Edinburgh palaeontologist Greg Funston, lead author of the research published in the Canadian Journal of Earth
Sciences, said the scientists were amazed at how similar the embryonic bones were to older juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs and noted the jaws boasted functional teeth.
‘‘So although we can’t get a complete picture, what we can see looks very similar to the adults,’’ Funston said.
It appears that tyrannosaurs, Funston added, were ‘‘born ready to hunt, already possessing some of the key adaptations that gave tyrannosaurs their powerful bites’’.
‘‘So it’s likely that they were capable of hunting fairly quickly after birth, but we need more fossils to tell exactly how fast that was.’’ — Reuters