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79.5 Million Years Old Tyrannosaur’s Fossils Discovered In Canada

By Akinwale Akinyoade

11 February 2020   |   3:46 pm

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The fossils of a new type of tyrannosaur have been discovered in Canada. NBC reported on Monday that the carnivorous Thanatotheristes degrootorum is a cousin of the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex and has large serrated teeth. NBC also said the massive animal measured about 26 feet long from its snout to its tail. “Imposing” might even be…

The fossils of a new type of tyrannosaur have been discovered in Canada.

NBC reported on Monday that the carnivorous Thanatotheristes degrootorum is a cousin of the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex and has large serrated teeth.

NBC also said the massive animal measured about 26 feet long from its snout to its tail.

“Imposing” might even be putting it lightly — the tyrannosaur’s teeth were each more than 2.7 inches long, according to NBC.

Researchers have dubbed the creature “reaper of death” because of how terrifying they are. They say the creature had unique vertical ridges that ran from its eyes to its nose

According to researchers on a study about the finding, the 79.5 million-years-old tyrannosaur is the oldest known tyrannosaur on record to have been discovered in North America and is also the first new species to be discovered in Canada in half a decade.

Jared Voris, the lead researcher on the study, said that the tyrannosaur would have been eight feet tall at the hips.

Voris who is a doctoral student at the University of Calgary doctoral student of paleontology said to Live Science:

“It definitely would have been quite an imposing animal,” he said to Live Science.

Speaking to Live Science about the discovered animal’s feature (vertical ridges that ran from its eyes to its nose), he said that they “are not like anything we’ve ever seen before in other tyrannosaur species.”

“Exactly what the ridges do, we’re not quite sure,” Voris said.

“These [features] differ from tyrannosaur groups in other regions: the more lightly built relatives, like Albertosaurus, that tended to live slightly farther north in south-central Alberta, and more primitive forms with shorter, bulldog-like faces of the southern USA, [including] New Mexico and Utah,” added co-researcher Darla Zelenitsky to Live Science.

While the fossils were found back in 2010 by the Canadian couple John and Sandra De Groot, the discovery of T. degrootorum was not made until Voris was going back through the collection of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta.

There were some other fossils found nearby those of T. degrootorum in Alberta, but those belonged to some plant-eating dinosaurs, Live Science reported. Zelenitsky told the publication that it’s likely those species were prey for the carnivore.