New clues to tarrying new species of Tyrannosaur, which might serve as the definitive ancestor of the T. Rex, could be the missing link that answers the evolution of the Tyrant King Lizard.
New Species of Tyrannosaur Found
The Daspletosaurus wilsoni has a unique feature of spiked hornets surrounding its eyes, reported Live Science.
This variant of tyrannosaurid was put together from pieces of a fossilized skull and skeletal fragments, with a rib and toe bone dated to 76.5 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. It lasted from 145 to 66 million years ago as the missing link.
A group of paleontologists based in the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota were the ones who found the Tyrannosaur ancestor in the Judith River Formation.
They uncovered the fossil in Northeastern Montana from 2017 to 2021 in a study posted in November in the journal Paleontology and Evolutionary Science.
One of the crew members, Jack Wilson, found it by accident when he saw a small, flat bone piece sticking out from a cliff bottom. It was seen to be part of the nostril of the D. wilsoni.
Excavating the Missing Link to the Mighty T.Rex
Digging the bones was challenging because of the place they were found under a cliff with 26 feet of rock to remove. It took scientists a long time to remove rocky parts of the cliff using jackhammers to access the precious fossils.
They named the new species BDM 107 'Sisyphus' due to their incredible effort to free the surrounding rock. Sisyphus is a tragic figure in Greek mythology who cheated death twice, making Hades doom him to roll a massive boulder to the top of a mountain for eternity.
Researchers consider the D. wilsoni coming from Daspletosaurus torosus as the precursor of the Daspletosaurus horneri, which came to be 77 and 75 million years ago, noted Nature.
Anatomical clues to the Daspletosaurus or Frightful lizard-link Examination of the anatomy of the new dino shows a connection to the Daspletosaurus lineage leading to T.Rex.
Three of these daspletosaurs are part of the genus Tyrannosauridae, with nine genera like the Tyrannosaurus. Daspletosaurus is Greek for "frightful lizard." Up to this point, the Tyrannosauridae species have been difficult to uncover, making it tough to determine the evolutionary relationships among different species.
Paleontologists Elas Warshaw and Denver Fowler presumably made a statement about the topic based on the study's co-authors. Tyrannosaurids are believed to be either a single bloodline that has been adapting in place or several close relatives that are not attributed to each other, mentioned Dickinson Museum Center.
Finding the D. wilsoni shows the three daspletosaurs were sequential on the evolutionary ladder, not diverging from each other as related cousins.
D. wilsoni is an excellent example of a transition from the D. torosus and D. horneri due to its features with older tyrannosaurid species. Like having horns over the eye, seen in earlier types, like larger air pockets in the skull.
The middle of the link led to the earlier and later species of the theropod dinosaur. They think the later Tyrannosaurids, like T. Rex, came from them. D. wilsoni, a new species of Tyrannosaur, is believed to be the missing link that evolved into the Mighty T.rex.
