Big Daddy: New Tyrannosaur Discovered

By Rachael Rettner

 - LiveScience

T. rex's family tree just got one member larger. Scientists unearthed bones from a new dinosaur species, including an adult specimen and bones from a "teenager" that lived some 75 million years ago.

Universal Pictures

Tyrannosaurus rex stalks his hapless victims in the movie, "Land of the Lost." Researchers have just uncovered a new species of the lizard king.

T. rex's family tree just got one member larger. Scientists unearthed bones from a new dinosaur species, including an adult specimen and bones from a "teenager" that lived some 75 million years ago.

Called Bistahieversor sealeyi, the dinosaur lived about 10 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex appeared on the scene. Even so, B. sealeyi belongs to the same dinosaur linage as the famous T. rex.

Fossils from Bistahieversor (pronounced: bistah-he-ee-versor) were discovered in New Mexico back in 1998, and after many years of studying the bones, the paleontologists just announced the findings as a new genus and species, which they detail in the January issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

To the untrained eye, Bistahieversor looks like most of its tyrannosaur relatives, but many subtle features, especially in its skull, set it apart.

"When we take all these features together, it's clear that we have something different than what's been seen before," said Thomas Carr, a professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin, who studies tyrannosaurs and co-authored the paper.