The mounted skeleton of Daspletosaurus torosus on view at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, Canada. The skull is a cast for display. The original skull, including the braincase, is preserved for study in the museum’s collections. Credit: Tetsuto Miyashita © Canadian Museum of Nature
SciTechDaily has a story about tyrannosaur skulls. Researchers in Canada and Argentina scanned the skulls to reconstruct the braincase of two well-preserved Daspletosaurs. Their research, which found more variation than expected, was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
Among the fierce carnivores that lived during the late Cretaceous was a predator named Daspletosaurus. The massive tyrannosaur, about nine meters long, lived in the coastal forest of what is now Alberta around 75 million years ago — preceding the more famous T. rex by about 10 million years.
For the first time, scientists in Canada and Argentina have used CT scans to digitally reconstruct the brain, inner ear, and surrounding bones (known as the braincase) of two well-preserved Daspletosaurus specimens.
Their results, published online today in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, counter a prevailing view that dinosaur brains and the bones enclosing and protecting them varied little within species, or among closely related species, especially when compared with changes observed in other parts of the skeleton. “Our study with the two Daspletosaurus specimens suggests otherwise,” explains Dr. Tetsuto Miyashita, paleontologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature and senior author of the study.
