The specimen, called Nanuqsaurus hoglundi, has been nicknamed the “polar bear lizard.” It made its home in north Alaska, specifically the island of Laramidia, 66 million years ago, according to The Verge. They measure about 6’5″ (190 cm) tall, which may seem like a lot, though it’s half the size of the average T. rex height of 13 feet (396 cm).
AFP notes that the polar bear lizard probably had a strong sense of smell and sharp vision at night to better hunt for prey, since the land was dark for roughly half the year. The little T. rex was about the same size as another meat-eating dinosaur found in the area, the Troodon.
The findings were published yesterday in a PLOS ONE article entitled “A Diminutive New Tyrannosaur from the Top of the World.”
When researchers made the discovery, the bone fragments were considered unusual because they were small, but also from an adult.
“It wasn’t until the past few years, with more work being done on growth rates, that we were able to look at these pieces in finer detail and realise that they weren’t a youngster of a known species, but a mature individual of something new,” Ronald Tykoski, a fossil preparator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and study co-author, told the Guardian. “It is absolutely a pygmy tyrannosaur.”
However, some paleontologists are skeptical that the T. rex was actually half the size of its close cousin. Roger Benson, a vertebrate palaeontologist at Oxford University who was not involved with the study, is intrigued by its size. However, he suggests that the fossils that the researchers had to work with might not be enough evidence.
“It’s certainly a small individual, and they point to some features that suggest it’s an adult, but there’s still a possibility that it’s a young one.” Benson told the Guardian.
Researchers hope that more trips to Alaska will lead to more fossil discoveries, which will in turn help them better understand what life in the Arctic might have been like in prehistoric times.
