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While we are still (at least) in a few years from cloning dinosaurs and building theme parks around them, the scientific consensus about their presence on Earth millions of years ago has been questioned by a recent fossil discovery.
Last week, 65% of a skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex was discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada, and according to National Geographic, it is the largest ever discovered. This dinosaur reached the age of 28 and reached 19,500 pounds.
This makes the fossil, nicknamed "Scotty", the oldest and oldest T-Rex ever discovered. And its discovery means that some predatory thunder lizards have lived longer and have grown larger than expected.
"As we find more specimens of these other theropods, we are going to find their" Scottys: "their particularly large, particularly elderly individuals," said the director. study and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta, Scott Persons. these animals turn out to increase the range of body size or even overlap or even surpass what we know about T-Rex. "
"Scotty" traveled the Earth somewhere about 68 million years ago, at a time when Canada was a subtropical paradise – in name only. The fossil contained massive bone growth between two teeth, which probably meant an infection, and several broken coccyx, indicating that the Cretaceous was not a picnic.
"It was not an easy life even for the predatory dinosaur king, judging by all those injuries," said Nizar Ibrahim, paleontologist at Detroit Mercy University.
It is interesting to note that "Scotty" was first discovered in 1991 and takes its name from the scotch bottle that the field team had on hand to celebrate their discoveries. It took almost 30 years, however, to properly extract all of its skeletal remains from the rock in which they were buried.
Of course, the effort seems worth it, as we continue to piece together what was life at the time – and how our predecessors on Earth were able to survive. Before we start cloning them for our future theme parks, of course.
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