Babies from famed carnivorous dinosaur group were 'born ready' to hunt - Toronto Sun

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Both are slightly smaller cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex. The largest-known tyrannosaurs topped 40 feet (12 metres) long and 8 tons in weight.

An illustration shows the silhouettes of two baby tyrannosaurs from the Cretaceous Period of North America based on partial fossils unearthed in the U.S. state of Montana and Alberta, with the silhouettes of University of Edinburgh scientist Greg Funston and an adult Albertosaurus shown to provide a size comparison. Photo by Greg Funston/University of Edinburgh /Handout via REUTERS

The jaw possesses distinctive tyrannosaur traits, including a deep groove inside and a prominent chin.

University of Edinburgh paleontologist Greg Funston, lead author of the research published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, said the scientists were amazed at how similar the embryonic bones were to older juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs and noted that the jaws boasted functional teeth.

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“So although we can’t get a complete picture, what we can see looks very similar to the adults,” Funston said.

It appears that tyrannosaurs, Funston added, were “born ready to hunt, already possessing some of the key adaptations that gave tyrannosaurs their powerful bites. So it’s likely that they were capable of hunting fairly quickly after birth, but we need more fossils to tell exactly how fast that was.”

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2021-01-26 22:59:54Z
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