What's in a Name? The Battle of Baby T. Rex and Nanotyrannus. (nytimes.com) 20
A dinosaur fossil listed for sale in London for $20 million embodies one of the most heated debates in paleontology. From a report: When fossil hunters unearthed the remains of a dinosaur from the hills of eastern Montana five years ago, they carried several key characteristics of a Tyrannosaurus rex: a pair of giant legs for walking, a much smaller pair of arms for slashing prey, and a long tail stretching behind it. But unlike a full-grown T. rex, which would be about the size of a city bus, this dinosaur was more like the size of a pickup truck. The specimen, which is now listed for sale for $20 million at an art gallery in London, raises a question that has come to obsess paleontologists: Is it simply a young T. rex who died before reaching maturity, or does it represent a different but related species of dinosaur known as a Nanotyrannus?
The dispute has produced reams of scientific research and decades of debate, polarizing paleontologists along the way. Now, with dinosaur fossils increasingly fetching eye-popping prices at auction, the once-esoteric dispute has begun to ripple through auction houses and galleries, where some see the T. rex name as a valuable brand that can more easily command high prices. "It's ultimately a quite in-the-weeds question of the taxonomy and the classification of one very particular type of dinosaur," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. "However, it involves T. rex, and the debate always gets a little bit more ferocious when the king of dinosaurs is involved."
On the internet, juvenile T. rex versus Nanotyrannus has become something of a meme, providing fuel for jokes on niche social media channels. ("I won't believe in Nanotyrannus until it shows up at my own door and devours me," a paleontology student with the handle "TheDinoBuff" joked recently on the social media site X.) The gallery selling the specimen discovered in Montana -- which is known as Chomper -- was faced with a choice. Call it a juvenile T. rex? Label it a Nanotyrannus? Or embrace the ambiguity of an unresolved scientific debate? The David Aaron gallery in London went with calling it a "rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton." It cited an influential 2020 paper on the subject led by Holly N. Woodward, which used an analysis of growth rings within bone samples from two disputed specimens -- which are estimated to have been similarly sized to Chomper -- to argue that they were juveniles nearing growth spurts.
The dispute has produced reams of scientific research and decades of debate, polarizing paleontologists along the way. Now, with dinosaur fossils increasingly fetching eye-popping prices at auction, the once-esoteric dispute has begun to ripple through auction houses and galleries, where some see the T. rex name as a valuable brand that can more easily command high prices. "It's ultimately a quite in-the-weeds question of the taxonomy and the classification of one very particular type of dinosaur," said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. "However, it involves T. rex, and the debate always gets a little bit more ferocious when the king of dinosaurs is involved."
On the internet, juvenile T. rex versus Nanotyrannus has become something of a meme, providing fuel for jokes on niche social media channels. ("I won't believe in Nanotyrannus until it shows up at my own door and devours me," a paleontology student with the handle "TheDinoBuff" joked recently on the social media site X.) The gallery selling the specimen discovered in Montana -- which is known as Chomper -- was faced with a choice. Call it a juvenile T. rex? Label it a Nanotyrannus? Or embrace the ambiguity of an unresolved scientific debate? The David Aaron gallery in London went with calling it a "rare juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton." It cited an influential 2020 paper on the subject led by Holly N. Woodward, which used an analysis of growth rings within bone samples from two disputed specimens -- which are estimated to have been similarly sized to Chomper -- to argue that they were juveniles nearing growth spurts.
Why "nano"? (Score:2)
If T-rex is without a prefix, a "nano" should be a billion times smaller, not three times smaller.
Re: Why "nano"? (Score:1)
It should be a "Minityrannus Princeps". Or maybe "Tyrannosaurus Dux".
Re: (Score:2)
Them liebrul soyentist will call it T-Sux, you betcha.
Why "annus" (Score:2)
Should be "anus"
Re: (Score:2)
Naturally, how do you even through an "annus"?
Better name (Score:2)
Why don't they call it Weerannosaurus Rex?
It's small, but it may or may not be the same species. The name doesn't really say.
Re: (Score:2)
The name doesn't say, one way or the other, because nobody knows. It's a morphological species, for sure. But whether that overlaps with a biological species, and whether several morphological species represent different growth stages of one biological species is always an open question.
(Which is a question you'll get to grip with somewhere in the second or third month of your palaeontology training. Along with the "lumpers" versus "splitte
Give it to Woodward (Score:2)
But is it a different species? (Score:2)
The size shouldn't matter with the naming conventions, only whether it is actually a different species. We have DNA testing for that, you could also scale the dino bones up to see if they match or are significantly different in structure, not everyone in the human species is the same size, we have people ranging from a few cm before they are born to Robert Wadlow who was 272cm.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me know when you successfully DNA test a 65 million year old fossil.
Re: (Score:2)
I saw a movie on this once where you can extract it from mosquitos trapped in amber :D
But seriously, soft tissue within the bones can contain DNA or DNA fragments and T-Rex DNA has been recovered in the recent past.
Re: But is it a different species? (Score:2)
They *can*, but on specimens of that age, itâ(TM)s very rare for DNA to survive.
Re: (Score:3)
Estimates are that the longest DNA survives is roughly a million years. We don't have any dinosaur DNA. Mammoths and terror birds yes, but no dinosaurs. The oldest DNA we've found is about two million years old. [scientificamerican.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Life always finds a way.
Re: (Score:2)
Vacuous platitudes find a way.
Re: (Score:2)
It has? I think that DNA has a decay time on the order of a few hundred thousand years, not 66 million+. I don;t think we have enough dino DNA to do anything useful with it, certainly not enough to distinguish between "real" t. rex baby and a very-closely-related cousin with 99% the same genes.
Brett
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The team that extracted collagen from a T.rex bone 20-odd years ago got enough to infer the functional DNA that formed it (minus introns etc) and found it closer to avian DNA than mammalian DNA. Which is about the level of results you can expect.
Chomper? (Score:2)
So dinosaurs names are being sourced from The Land Before Time now?
Baby Rex (Score:2)