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DISCOVERED: T. Rex's 'Great Uncle' »
A new narrow-snouted species of tyrannosaur discovered in Utah reveals that the isolation of an ancient island continent may have spurred incredible dinosaur diversity some 80 million years ago. Lythronax argestes was discovered in 2009 in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah. Paleontologists Mark Loewen and Randall Irmis, of the Natural History Museum of Utah, in Salt Lake City, were eating lunch together when they got the call about the discovery. "Immediately, we were super-excited, because no fossils had been found in rocks quite that age, the 80-million-year-old rocks, so we knew there was a good chance it could be something new," Irmis told LiveScience. Indeed, the fossil — about half of a skull and a half-dozen or so of bones from the body — is of a previously unknown species of tyrannosaurid, a group that includes the famous Tyrannosaurus rex. Source Main page (current trends)
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