Dinosaur news / articles
Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
cousin of the mighty t-rex
Length- 36 feet
Height- 13 feet
Weight- Well over 13,000 pounds
This "Tyrant" dino was unearthed in China and is described in the latest issue of the journal Cretaceous Research. Its remains consist of a fossilized skull and jaw bones. In life, as you can see from the drawing, this meat lover sported a mouth full of very sharp teeth, the better to bite into its victims.
NEWS: New Tyrannosaur Had More Teeth Than T. Rex
Zhuchengtyrannus magnus joins T. rex and the Asian Tarbosaurus as being members of a specialized group of enormous carnivores called tyrannosaurines. The tyrannosaurines existed in North America and eastern Asia during the Late Cretaceous Period, which lasted from about 99 to 65 million years ago.
In addition to their fondness for meat, the tyrannosaurines were characterised by small arms, two-fingered hands, and large powerful jaws that could have delivered a powerful bone-crushing bite. They were likely both predators and scavengers.
NEWS: T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other
David Hone, lead author of the paper, was quoted in a press release as saying, “Zhuchengtyrannus can be distinguished from other tyrannosaurines by a combination of unique features in the skull not seen in any other theropod.”
“With only some skull and jaw bones to work with, it is difficult to precisely gauge the overall size of this animal. But the bones we have are just a few centimetres smaller than the equivalent ones in the largest T. rex specimen. So there is no doubt that Zhuchengtyrannus was a huge tyrannosaurine," added Hone, a researcher at the University College Dublin School of Biology and Environmental Science.
“We named the new genus Zhuchengtyrannus magnus - which means the ‘Tyrant from Zhucheng’ - because the bones were found in the city of Zhucheng, in eastern China's Shandong Province," he continued.
If you follow dinosaur research, the name of one of Hone's colleagues on this project will be familiar to you: Xu Xing of the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in China. In addition to this dinosaur, more than 30 other dinosaurs have been named by Xu, making him the world leader in describing new dinosaur species. At Discovery News, we've had the pleasure of working with Xu many times.
He's struck dino gold with a few sites in particular. One is a quarry in Shandong Province, eastern China, where the remains of this dinosaur were found. (A bunch of duck-billed dinosaurs were also discovered at this location.)
China was clearly home to an incredible number of dinosaurs, but a reason why so many important discoveries are made there (aside from skilled paleontologists like Xu and Hone) is because of certain geological features that make such finds easier today. In this case, the dinosaur bones washed into a large flood plain, along with other prehistoric animal remains, and remained there over the millennia.
cousin of the mighty t-rex
Length- 36 feet
Height- 13 feet
Weight- Well over 13,000 pounds
This "Tyrant" dino was unearthed in China and is described in the latest issue of the journal Cretaceous Research. Its remains consist of a fossilized skull and jaw bones. In life, as you can see from the drawing, this meat lover sported a mouth full of very sharp teeth, the better to bite into its victims.
NEWS: New Tyrannosaur Had More Teeth Than T. Rex
Zhuchengtyrannus magnus joins T. rex and the Asian Tarbosaurus as being members of a specialized group of enormous carnivores called tyrannosaurines. The tyrannosaurines existed in North America and eastern Asia during the Late Cretaceous Period, which lasted from about 99 to 65 million years ago.
In addition to their fondness for meat, the tyrannosaurines were characterised by small arms, two-fingered hands, and large powerful jaws that could have delivered a powerful bone-crushing bite. They were likely both predators and scavengers.
NEWS: T. Rex Teens Fought, Disfigured Each Other
David Hone, lead author of the paper, was quoted in a press release as saying, “Zhuchengtyrannus can be distinguished from other tyrannosaurines by a combination of unique features in the skull not seen in any other theropod.”
“With only some skull and jaw bones to work with, it is difficult to precisely gauge the overall size of this animal. But the bones we have are just a few centimetres smaller than the equivalent ones in the largest T. rex specimen. So there is no doubt that Zhuchengtyrannus was a huge tyrannosaurine," added Hone, a researcher at the University College Dublin School of Biology and Environmental Science.
“We named the new genus Zhuchengtyrannus magnus - which means the ‘Tyrant from Zhucheng’ - because the bones were found in the city of Zhucheng, in eastern China's Shandong Province," he continued.
If you follow dinosaur research, the name of one of Hone's colleagues on this project will be familiar to you: Xu Xing of the Beijing Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in China. In addition to this dinosaur, more than 30 other dinosaurs have been named by Xu, making him the world leader in describing new dinosaur species. At Discovery News, we've had the pleasure of working with Xu many times.
He's struck dino gold with a few sites in particular. One is a quarry in Shandong Province, eastern China, where the remains of this dinosaur were found. (A bunch of duck-billed dinosaurs were also discovered at this location.)
China was clearly home to an incredible number of dinosaurs, but a reason why so many important discoveries are made there (aside from skilled paleontologists like Xu and Hone) is because of certain geological features that make such finds easier today. In this case, the dinosaur bones washed into a large flood plain, along with other prehistoric animal remains, and remained there over the millennia.
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Scientists have unearthed a fossilised claw from a new dinosaur, which looks strikingly similar to the creature depicted in Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic Park.
Unearthing the fossilised claw of Velociraptor's relative is shedding light on how the sharp claw was used as a weapon, scientists have said.
The claw: Newly discovered raptor dinosaur, Talos sampsoni, shown here in a fleshed-out reconstruction, had switchblade talons
And this research also adds to the mysterious complexity seen in the continent where the fossil was found.
The new dinosaur is a 75-million-year-old feathered raptor named Talos sampsoni.
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'Talos' is in homage to a winged bronze giant in Greek mythology who could run at lightning speed but succumbed to a wound to his ankle, 'sampsoni' in honor of Scott Sampson of the PBS series 'Dinosaur Train,' and a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.
'When we realized we had evidence of an injury, the excitement was palpable,' Zanno told Live Science magazine. 'An injured specimen has a story to tell.'
Discovery: The fossilised claw looks strikingly similar to a dinosaur hatched in the film Jurassic Park
'Evidence of injury can shed light on how a body part was used, the researchers explained. An injury to the foot of a raptor dinosaur, for example, can yield new details about the potential function of its toes and claws.'
Using a high-resolution micro-CT scanner, Zanno and her colleagues saw the injury was restricted to the toe with the enlarged claw —it had either been fractured or bitten and then suffered from a localized infection.
'People have speculated that the talon on the foot of raptor dinosaurs was used to capture prey, fight with other members of the same species, or defend the animal against attack,' Zanno said.
The injured toe showed signs of the kind of changes in bone that occur over many weeks to months, suggesting that Talos lived with a serious injury to its foot for a long time.
Footprints made by raptors closely related to Talos suggest they all held the switchblade talon off the ground when walking, only using it for inflciting damage.
Patrick O'Connor at Ohio University said living with an injury on one foot showed the power of the talon as the creature managed to survive with just one.
Talos lived in a warm greenhouse world devoid of polar ice caps. In what is now North America, a shallow seaway that ran from the Gulf of Mexico through to the Arctic Ocean divided the continent into two landmasses, East America, or Appalachia, and West America, or Laramidia, for several million years.
The dinosaurs of the lost continent of Laramidia appeared to be unusually diverse. Normally, large animals are expected to span the whole area in which they live, as is the case with coyotes and mountain lions nowadays, and this might be expected to prove true with relatively small continents such as Laramidia. However, dinosaurs from the rock formation holding Talos are entirely distinct from ones living just a few hundred miles to the north in what is now Montana and Alberta.
The bones of Talos will be on exhibit for the first time in the Past Worlds Observatory at the new Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. The scientists detailed their findings online yesterday in the journal PLoS ONE.
i know i posted a few threads in only a few minutes but bored and nothing to do, also excited about tomorrows game coming through, this is actually very interesting information too! i though i would give jp fans some cool info about this
when i find more latest info i will post in threads ok! make really interesting titles like ive been doing:D:D
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17511
which may be of interest to dinosaur buffs.
bloodkiller, I'm going to close this thread since there's already one for this. Go ahead and post your links in the existing paleontology thread (as links please, not as copy/paste text).