A T. rex tooth discovered by UW Burke Museum paleontologists in Montana.
Tom Wolken/Burke Museum
Science News has an interesting item about the discovery of a new Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. The skeleton includes the skull, ribs, vertebrae, and parts of the jaw and pelvis. It was discovered this summer by two University of Washington Burke Museum paleontology volunteers, Jason Love and Luke Tufts. About 45 people contributed to the recovery, which took about a month to complete. The animal was given the nickname "Tufts-Love Rex" after the discoverers. It lived about 66.3 million years ago, which was very close to the end of the Cretaceous Period.
The original story appeared in the UWToday.
Paleontologists with the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture have discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex, including a very complete skull. The find, which paleontologists estimate to be about 20 percent of the animal, includes vertebrae, ribs, hips and lower jaw bones.
The team, led by UW biology professor and Burke Museum Adjunct Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Greg Wilson, discovered the T. rex during an expedition to the Hell Creek Formation in northern Montana — an area that is world-famous for its fossil dinosaur sites. Two Burke Museum paleontology volunteers, Jason Love and Luke Tufts, initially discovered pieces of fossilized bone protruding from a rocky hillside. The bones’ large size and honeycomb-like structure indicated they belonged to a carnivorous dinosaur. Upon further excavation, the team discovered the T. rex skull along with ribs, vertebrae, and parts of the jaw and pelvis.
T. rex was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs to ever roam the Earth. Measuring an average of 40-feet long and 15 to 20-feet tall, T. rex was a fierce predator with serrated teeth and large jaws. Fossil evidence shows it ate other dinosaurs like Edmontosaurus and Triceratops, with crushed bones from the animals even showing up in the its fossilized poop. T. rex lived about 66–68 million years ago in forested river valleys in western North America during the late Cretaceous Period.
