Thursday, September 17, 2009

Mean

A fossil of a smaller version of a TRex was found in China.

Based on estimates of other similar-sized theropods, or "beast-footed" dinosaurs, Sereno and his colleagues estimate an adult Raptorex was about 9 feet tall and weighed about 143 pounds.

By contrast, the Tyrannosaurus rex, which topped the prehistoric food chain until dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago, was believed to weigh at least five tons.

Scientists hypothesize that Raptorex ran its prey down, using its enlarged skull, powerful jaws and sharp teeth to dispatch animals much larger than itself. Like the T. rex, the Raptorex also had tiny forelimbs, they said.

"We can say that these features did not evolve as a consequence of large body size but rather evolved as an efficient set of predatory weapons in an animal that was 1/100th the size of Tyrannosaurus rex and that lived 60 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex," Brusatte said.


Interesting. Would not was to run into these guys on the street.

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