Small dinosaur with fearsome relative detection

It is in the journal Nature, Ecology & Evolution which the new species are presented for the first time: a small dinosaur that is believed to have been a sort of predecessor or at least a distant relative of the larger Tyrannosaurus rex.

the , who received the scientific name Suskityrannus hazelae, was not higher than one meter and weighed somewhere between 20 and 40 kg.

Suskityrannus hazelae, lived 92 million years ago, during the geological period which is usually referred to as younger chalk.

– Suskityrannus gives us an insight into the evolution of tyrannosaurierna just before they took over the planet. It belongs to the fauna which just preceded the iconic dinosauriefaunan that came a little later and in which we find the famous dinosaurs as Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus rex and anknäbbsdinosaurier, as the underlying cause of the condition, " says Sterling Nesbitt, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech College of Science in the united states, to the journal.

one of those who found the now analyzed the fossil in New Mexico in 1998, but back then as a 16-year-old student with a passion for paleontology.

Fossil is far from complete, but together with another fossil of the same species, which was discovered in 1997, believe the scientists know quite precisely how Suskityrannus once looked like.

the Kinship with the Tyrannosaurus rex, although there are several differences between the two species, say the researchers. Apart from the most obvious, the size, look even feet different, at the same time that the head is more long and narrow. Of Tyrannosaurus rex, the head was more "compact".