Dueling Dinosaurs Fossil Shocks Scientists: ‘Teenage T. rex’ Was a New Species All Along
A Decades-Long Dinosaur Mystery For over 40 years, paleontologists have wrangled over mysterious tyrannosaur fossils that didn’t quite fit the mold of T. rex. The controversy began with a small skull found in 1942 in Montana’s Hell Creek Formation – the same Late Cretaceous deposit that yielded T. rex. In 1988, some researchers formally named that skull Nanotyrannus lancensis, meaning “dwarf tyrant,” proposing it was a new pygmy tyrannosaur species nationalgeographic.com. However, many experts argued these remains (and others like them) were simply juvenile T. rex specimens that hadn’t grown to full size nationalgeographic.com. The question — teenage T. rex
