Relevance: Mains: G.S paper III: Science and technology
Why in news?
- Scientists have found that a dinosaur fossil, found in Alberta in Canada in 2010, belongs to a new species of tyrannosaur.
About:
- They have named it Thanatotheristes, which means “reaper of death”.
- Tyrannosaurs were one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs to have ever lived, with very large and high skulls, and the best known among them is the Tyrannosaurus rex, celebrated in the Jurassic Park series.
- The 79-million-year-old fossil that the researchers have found is the oldest tyrannosaur known from northern North America.
- The fossil specimen is important to understand the Late Cretaceous period, which is the period when tyrannosaurs roamed the Earth.