Fossil Wiki:Featured articles/Nanotyrannus



Nanotyrannus (meaning "small tyrant") is a problematic genus of tyrannosaurid dinosaur, and is possibly a juvenile specimen of Tyrannosaurus. Nanotyrannus is the smallest known tyrannosaurid and was one of the last tyrannosaurids to before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the K-T event. The genus is represented only by a small skull that was discovered by Charles W. Gilmore in 1942 and described in 1946 as a specimen of Gorgosaurus lancensis (now known as Albertosaurus). In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, the late curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is currently on display. Opinions continue to remain divided on the validity of N. lancensis. Nanotyrannus can be a possible juvenile of a tyrannosaur that is closely related to Tyrannosaurus and the adult of this animal is yet to be identified, or it really is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus. In either case, an adult Nanotyrannus has to be discovered or a juvenile Tyrannosaurus of the same size as Nanotyrannus but morphologically distinct from it in order to fully resolve this debate. Many paleontologists consider the skull to belong to a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. (Read more...)