FSU biologist says new dinosaur is oldest cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex
Florida State University paleobiologist Gregory M. Erickson sliced up some ancient dinosaur bones uncovered in China to help an international team of scientists identify a new genus and species. Despite striking skeletal differences and only subtle similarities, the FSU researcher determined that the two remarkably intact specimens were cousins of North America's hulking Tyrannosaurus rex. <p...Tyrannosaur survivorship -- tough times for teens
A massive dinosaur death bed in Alberta has helped map out the animal's life span and thrown doubt on long-held theories about how one species lived, says new research conducted in part at the University of Alberta. "One of the surprises to me was that the overall pattern of survivorship fits closer to an attritional model rather than the catastrophic model we were expecting," said world-...Protein fragments sequenced in 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex
In a venture once thought to lie outside the reach of science, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have captured and sequenced tiny pieces of collagen protein from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex. The protein fragments—seven in all—appear to most closely match amino acid sequences found in collagen of present day chickens, lending support to a...Fused nasal bones helped tyrannosaurids dismember prey
New evidence may help explain the brute strength of the tyrannosaurid, says a University of Alberta researcher whose finding demonstrates how a fused nasal bone helped turn the animal into a "zoological superweapon." "Fused, arch-like nasal bones are a unique feature of tyrannosaurids," said Dr. Eric Snively, a post doctoral research fellow at the University of Alberta. "This adaptation,...