This isn’t your lovable, Land Before Time long neck! Researchers have just discovered a brand new Canadian tyrannosaur in Alberta, and they’re calling it the “reaper of death.” Did you just get shivers? Because we just got shivers.
The Thanatotheristes, or as we’re calling him, Thana-tot for short, predates the T.Rex by 12 million years. This makes it the oldest known tyrannosaur discovered in the country. Not only is this just super cool, it’s also super helpful to the paleontology community!
“We’re learning more about the ecosystem at this older period of time when dinosaurs roamed southern Alberta,” Darla Zelenitsky, Ph.D. told Global News.
This incredible discovery was made by Jared Voris, a 25-year-old Ph.D. student at the U of C. He predicts that Thana-tot could have been nearly 8 metres long and had an 80-centimetre skull.
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The new tyrannosaur is an evolutionary offshoot, not be believed to be a direct ancestor of the T. Rex. They’re thinking he’s more closely related to the Daspletosaurus, a tyrannosaur found in Alberta. Either way, you wouldn’t have wanted to check him in an alleyway after he’d had a few drinks.
We can’t say we were finding new dinos at 25 years old. No, not adding to soceity in that magnitude at all. Very cool!
