New tyrannosaur fossil is most complete found in Southwestern US

Researchers are amazed to find nearly complete skeleton with many bones in life position

Date:  October 19, 2017

Source:  University of Utah

Summary:

A fossilized skeleton of a tyrannosaur discovered in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was airlifted by helicopter Oct 15, and delivered to the Natural History Museum of Utah where it will be uncovered, prepared, and studied. The fossil is approximately 76 million years old and is likely an individual of the species Teratophoneus curriei.

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Tyrannosaur Skull Bears Scars of Fierce Dino Battle

by Laura Geggel, Staff Writer | April 09, 2015 10:25am ET

Some 75 million years ago, a towering tyrannosaur may have lit into one of its own species, ripping into its skull and leaving behind jagged scars and deep punctures that have only recently seen the light of day.

The beastly tale comes from paleontologists examining the marred skull of the possible dinosaur victim, which itself was a teenage tyrannosaur. Even so, scientists not involved in this study warrant caution in such interpretations, noting the difficulty of pinning ancient crimes on any one genus without more evidence.

Researchers originally discovered the dinosaur skull in 1994 in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. An analysis showed the bones belonged to Daspletosaurus, a genus of tyrannosaur — a group of carnivorous, bipedal dinosaurs with deep jaws and short arms that includes the notorious Tyrannosaurus rex.

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New Tyrannosaur named 'Pinocchio rex'

By James MorganScience reporter, BBC News

A new type of Tyrannosaur with a very long nose has been nicknamed "Pinocchio rex".

The ferocious carnivore, nine metres long with a distinctive horny snout, was a cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Its skeleton was dug up in a Chinese construction site and identified by scientists at Edinburgh University, UK.

The 66-million-year-old predator, officially named Qianzhousaurus sinensis, is described in Nature Communications.

"Pinocchio" looked very different to other tyrannosaurs.

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Dino Dealer Says He's Not a 'Smuggler,' Calls Fossil 'Political Trophy'

A Florida fossil dealer who prepared the skeleton of a tyrannosaur and attempted to sell it at auction, questions assertions that the fossils were taken illegally from Mongolia, and says the dispute over its ownership has brought financial ruin on his family.

"Imagine watching your house burn down with everything you have in it and knowing you have no insurance," Eric Prokopi, a commercial fossil dealer based in Gainesville, Fla., writes in a lengthy statement issued to reporters today (June 22). 

The lost sale of the dinosaur has been devastating, he writes.

The process of preparing the skeleton — which federal agents took into protective custody earlier today — took "thousands of hours and every penny my wife and I had," Prokopi writes. 

The two transformed "chunks of rocks and a bunch of broken bones" into an 8-feet-tall and 24-feet-long (2.4 by 7.3-meters) skeleton that went up for public auction through Heritage Auctions on May 20. Mongolian President Elbegdorj Tsakhia attempted to stop the sale, saying the dinosaur, a species called both Tyrannosaurus bataar and Tarbosaurus bataar, was almost certainly taken illegally from his country.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/21145-fossil-dealer-speaks-out.html

'Shaggy' Tyrannosaur Now World's Biggest Feathered Beast

A newly discovered titanic tyrannosaur is the biggest feathered dinosaur yet, reaching up to 30 feet (9 meters) long and weighing more than 3,000 pounds.

While smaller than Tyrannosaurus rex, the new species, named Yutyrannus huali — meaning "beautiful feathered tyrant" — is still 40 times the weight of the largest feathered dinosaur known previously, Beipiaosaurus, which was described in 1999.

"Yutyrannus dramatically increases the size range of dinosaurs for which we have definite evidence of feathers," study researcher Xing Xu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing said in a statement. "It’s possible that feathers were much more widespread, at least among the meat-eating dinosaurs, than most scientists would have guessed even a few years ago."

The researchers found three well-preserved fossils of the species in a dig in Liaoning Province, in northeastern China, the same place Xu and his colleagues discovered Beipiaosaurus. 

Read on:  http://www.livescience.com/19480-huge-feathered-tyrannosaur.html