Scientists have found a T-Rex tooth embedded inside the healed tailbone of a duckbill dinosaur. They say this proves the most popular dinosaur ever to roam the planet was in fact a hunter. You might be saying this is no surprise, but the scientific community would beg to differ.
Serious scientists have been debating for over a century about whether or not the T-Rex was a hunter or a scavenger. Now that the 65 million-year-old duckbill fossil has been uncovered, Paleontologists say this is proof the Tyrannosaurus was a predator.
The T-Rex tooth was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. The state is a buffet of dinosaur fossils. In fact the first T-Rex fossil ever discovered was found in Montana. In 1902, fossil hunter Barnum Brown made the gigantic discovery. The fossil was the biggest dinosaur ever unearthed at the time.
Brown gave the animal the name Tyrannosaurus Rex -- meaning tyrant king in Latin. The discovery is known in the scientific community as "the holotype." This is the first specimen in the discovery of a new species to which all others are compared.
The co-author of the study, Peter Larson is saying they proved the T-Rex was more than an opportunistic scavenger and calls the tooth a "smoking gun." It's not just a smoking gun, we've actually found the bullet," Larson said.
Not everyone in the scientific community is convinced the discovery made by Peter Larson, and lead author Robert DePalma is proof the T-Rex was a hunter.
According to National Geographic, Jack Horner, a paleontologist at Montana State, who had no involvement in the research, says that one single bit of evidence is not enough to claim scientific fact.
DePalma says it is enough information to go on because the team is able to see that the duckbill dinosaur survived an encounter with a T-Rex. The area of the tail where the tooth was found shows evidence of infection and healing.
DePalma compared the T-Rex to a lion in the sense that both predators hunt and attack the hind quarters. DePalma says the attack patterns are similar and it is likely the Rex was giving chase when it bit the duckbill's tail.
The T-Rex became a part of the popular imagination when Steven Spielberg turned Michael Crichton's science fiction novel "Jurassic Park" into a successful feature film. The king of the dinosaurs terrorized the characters and made their lawyer a late night snack.
But the villain becomes a hero at the end of the film when he chomps those massive jaws around a couple of velociraptors looking to make a meal out of the surviving cast. In what has to be one of the best endings to a film, the T-Rex picks up one of the raptors throwing it across the room into a large T-Rex fossil before letting out a mighty roar as a banner that reads "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth" falls around it.
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