When we say T. rex, everybody thinks of the Tyranossaurus rex, the most famous predator of all-time that lived at the end of the Dinosaurs era and terrorised fellow Cretaceous dinos such as Triceratops. But from now on, the name T. rex will also describe another animal, a similarly ferocious creature... but underwater: the Tylosaurus rex.
A new palaeontological discovery, published on May 21 in the American Museum of Natural History, reveals that fossils discovered decades ago in Texas, one even from the 19th century, actually belong to a new species of Tylosaurus, which was a type of Mosasaurus, or giant marine reptile.
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After years of going to 22 museums in North America and Europe to carefully compare the fossils, the author of the study, Amelia Zietlow, has come to the conclusion that the fossils found in Texas don't belong to the species known as the Tylosaurus proriger, but to a new and larger species that has been named Tylosaurus rex. The work included "taking pictures, taking measurements, taking surface scans in some cases, and building up a dataset to be absolutely positive that we were seeing a pattern that could be attributed to a species-level difference", explained Zietlow on CNN.
The Tylosaurus rex holotype is on display at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. This animal (not a dinosaur) measured on average between 30 to 35 feet (9 to 11 meters), with a giant skull measuring 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) long, had serrated teeth and heavier jaw muscles, which for the authors are enough to grant him the name of T.rex...