A ferocious new tyrannosaur species named the "king of gore" was found in Utah.
The behemoth walked the Earth during the Late Cretaceous Period, between 95 and 70 million years ago, a University of Utah news release reported.
The new species, dubbed Lythronax (King of Gore), differed from the commonly known Tyrannosaurus rex in a number of ways. It possessed an unusually short snout, forward-pointing eyes, and a round back of the skull.
"The width of the back of the skull of Lythronax allowed it to see with an overlapping field of view -- giving it the binocular vision -- very useful for a predator and a condition we associate with T. rex,"Doctor Mark Loewen, the study's lead author, said.
Researchers had previously thought wide-skulled tyrannosaur only existed 70 million years ago, but this finding suggests they had evolved 10 years earlier.
The beast lived on Laramidia, which was on the shore of a great seaway that separated North America. The area also contained a numer of iconic horned and duck-billed dinosaurs.
Researchers have determined dinosaurs from southern Laramidia ("Utah, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico") were more closely related than those from the north ("Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and Canada). The southern Lythronax was believed to be more closely related with its relatives than the longer-snouted peers were up north.
"Lythronax may demonstrate that tyrannosaurs followed a pattern similar to what we see in other dinosaurs from this age, with different species living in the north and south at the same time," Doctor Joseph Sertich, a co-author of the study, said.
The researchers wondered why the northern and southern groups split in the first place.
"Lythronax and other tyrannosaurids diversified between 95 [and] 80 million years ago, during a time when North America's interior sea was at its widest extent. The incursion of the seaway onto large parts of low-lying Laramidia would have separated small areas of land from each other, allowing different species of dinosaurs to evolve in isolation on different parts of the landmass," Doctor Randall Irmis, a study co-author, said.
As the dinosaurs became more isolated by the changing landmass, the groups could have evolved to meet their local climate and dietary needs.
