Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Tech & Science

Study: Species of Tyrannosaurus may have been a cannibal

The tough, meat-eating Daspletosaurus, a genus of the Tyrannosaur, roamed about in western North America, primarily in the Canadian province of Alberta, around 75 million years ago. They were up to 30 feet long and weighed from between 2.5 and 3.8 tons.

The study looked closely at a skull of a Daspletosaurus found in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta in 1994 by Prof. Phillip Currie. Researchers from the University of London and the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada found the beast, relatively young when it died, had lived a violent life; there was physical evidence of grievous injuries from fights.

“The animal in question is what we call a sub-adult,” a Calgary Herald story quoted Prof. David Hone of the University of London saying. “It’s not really a baby, but it’s not really fully mature. Its human equivalent would be a teenager, 15 or 16. Basically it’s got a number of different injuries on the skull.”

Those injuries, which likely did not kill the Daspletosaurus, include a massive wound to the back of the head that caused the back of the skull to break off and left a tooth puncture in a bone. Further, damage to the jaw suggests that it was eaten at by another dinosaur after it died, possibly by a member of its own species.

“You’ve got some post-mortem scavenging event, quite possibly cannibalism,” Prof.David Hone said. It’s not the first time such conclusions have been drawn when examining fossil remains of the Daspletosaurus.

“If you are going to piece together fossil ecosystems – behaviour ecology of something that has been dead for hundreds of millions of years – one-off specimens, or even two or three specimens, get you only so far,” Prof. Hone said. “When you’ve got several incidents of it, it starts to look like something not necessarily common, but certainly not a complete outlier.”

The skull the PeerJ study examined belongs to the Royal Tyrrell.

Written By

You may also like:

Social Media

Wanna buy some ignorance? You’re in luck.

Tech & Science

Under new legislation that passed the House of Representatives last week, TikTok could be banned in the United States.

Life

Platforms like Instagram and Pinterest often suggest travel destinations based on your likes and viewing habits.

Social Media

From vampires and wendigos to killer asteroids, TikTok users are pumping out outlandish end-of-the-world conspiracy theories.