T. rex vs. “Nano”: New study says the small tyrannosaurs weren’t teenagers—they were another species
Not a teen rex: New histology and anatomy from the “Duelling Dinosaurs” tyrannosaur indicate the small “Nanotyrannus” fossils weren’t juvenile T. rex but distinct species—N. lancensis and N. lethaeus. If confirmed, late-Cretaceous predator communities were more diverse and size-structured than assumed, with big implications for decades of T. rex-centric research.
A new Nature paper argues that a set of small tyrannosaur fossils long dismissed as juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex actually belong to distinct, smaller species of tyrannosaur, including Nanotyrannus lancensis and a newly named N. lethaeus. If upheld, the finding rewrites how paleontologists think about predator diversity, food webs, and biogeography in the final moments before the end-Cretaceous extinction (~66 million years ago)
