We have found a lost cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, and it was a far more graceful creature than its more famous relative. Because of its long snout, its discoverers have nicknamed it “Pinocchio rex”.
Big tyrannosaurs like T. rex in North America and Tarbosaurus in Asia are famed for their massive, bone-crunching jaws. These made them apex predators, the terrors of the late Cretaceous world.
Now Junchang Lü of the Institute of Geology in Beijing, China, and his colleagues have described a new species called Qianzhousaurus sinensis. It had an unusually long and narrow jaw that marks it as a different type of predator.
“This is a Dobermann pinscher with a long, narrow snout, as opposed to T. rex and Tarbosaurus, which is a pit bull,” says Tom Holtz of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved in the research. “It’s another variation on being a tyrannosaur.”
Read the full, original story: New tyrannosaur was the Dobermann of the dinosaur era
