14 DAY TRIAL // Specialists with the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences and the University of Edinburgh have found a previously undocumented dinosaur species that they say is best described as the long-lost and long-snouted cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Due to its peculiar appearance, this new dinosaur species has been nicknamed Pinocchio rex. However, its official name is Qianzhousaurus sinensis, researchers stress.
“This is a different breed of tyrannosaur. It has the familiar toothy grin of T. rex, but its snout was much longer and it had a row of horns on its nose,” Dr. Steve Brusatte says.
“It might have looked a little comical, but it would have been as deadly as any other tyrannosaur, and maybe even a little faster and stealthier,” the specialist adds.
According to EurekAlert, these ancient used to inhabit present-day Asia, and evidence indicates that they fell off the biodiversity map about 66 million years ago.
They had fairly elongated skulls and long but narrow teeth. This means that they probably had a different menu than the one their deep-snouted relatives had and, therefore, were not in competition with them.
“The new discovery is very important. Along with Alioramus from Mongolia, it shows that the long-snouted tyrannosaurids were widely distributed in Asia.”
“Although we are only starting to learn about them, the long-snouted tyrannosaurs were apparently one of the main groups of predatory dinosaurs in Asia,” Professor Junchang Lü commented on the discovery of this new dinosaur species.