A legendary fossil housed at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh features skeletons apparently locked in prehistoric combat — an epic meeting of two of the world’s favorite dinosaurs: Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex. Or so paleontologists thought.
Researchers who spent the past five years studying the stunning collection of bones called the “dueling dinosaurs” say they have uncovered a case of mistaken identity, determining that the small-bodied dinosaur was not a juvenile T. Rex but rather a fully grown example of a hotly debated species known as Nanotyrannus lancensis.
“We have the growth record preserved in the microstructure of the bone, which shows that it’s an adult,” said James Napoli, a vertebrate paleontologist at Stony Brook University and coauthor of the new study published Thursday in the journal Nature. The discovery has triggered a rethink of many other fossils previously identified as teenage T. rex remains, Napoli added.
A pack of Nanotyrannus brazenly attacks a juvenile T. rex in this illustration. Anthony Hutchings
While similar in appearance, the two dinosaur species would have been very different: Nanotyrannus was 18 feet long, agile and built for speed, w
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