Saturday, September 19, 2009 BEIJING: A dinosaur 1 percent the size of Tyrannosaurus rex and with most of the predator’s distinctive features was found to have lived 60 million years earlier, scientists said, throwing a wrench into an evolutionary theory. Raptorex kriegsteini, as the newly found 125 million-year- old species is called, shares traits including enlarged jaw muscles and head, short arms and lanky legs with the much larger T-rex, said Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago palaeontologist and lead author of a study appearing in Science Express. The discovery in China turns on its head a theory that T- rex’s small arms and outsized head were necessary evolutionary steps to develop into the 6-ton predator that dominated the food chain in Asia and North America 65 million years ago.
Saturday, September 19, 2009 BEIJING: A dinosaur 1 percent the size of Tyrannosaurus rex and with most of the predator’s distinctive features was found to have lived 60 million years earlier, scientists said, throwing a wrench into an evolutionary theory. Raptorex kriegsteini, as the newly found 125 million-year- old species is called, shares traits including enlarged jaw muscles and head, short arms and lanky legs with the much larger T-rex, said Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago palaeontologist and lead author of a study appearing in Science Express. The discovery in China turns on its head a theory that T- rex’s small arms and outsized head were necessary evolutionary steps to develop into the 6-ton predator that dominated the food chain in Asia and North America 65 million years ago.
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