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Writing in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the researchers note
that the “multi-tonne, bone-crunching” T. rex that has become a
thundering icon of popular culture thrived in the Late Cretaceous,
between 66 million and 80 million years ago. Discoveries of distant T.
rex relatives have recently revealed that the tyrannosaur family long
consisted of small carnivores—like Dilong paradoxus, which was rst
found in China in 2004. But in the 1990s, when Nesbitt unearthed his
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6/5/2019 When Tyrannosaurs Were Tiny | Smart News | Smithsonian
fossil, the T. rex’s less imposing origins were not widely known or
recognized.
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