{"id":685766,"date":"2026-05-22T06:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685766\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T06:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T06:05:11","slug":"scientists-discover-new-marine-t-rex-that-was-twice-the-size-of-great-whites-and-meaner-than-any-mosasaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/685766\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover new marine T rex that was twice the size of great whites and \u2018meaner than any mosasaur\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists have discovered a new marine dinosaur species that grew 43ft and terrorised the seas<\/a> over 80 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Tylosaurus rex \u2013 T rex for short \u2013 was a massive mosasaur reptile <\/a>that lived primarily in what is now northern Texas.<\/p>\n

Its name means \u201cking of the tylosaurs\u201d, researchers say, distinguishing it from the iconic land dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex,<\/a> which translates to \u201ctyrant lizard\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides being huge, roughly twice the length of the largest great white sharks, T rex appeared to be a much meaner animal than other mosasaurs,\u201d said Ron Tykoski, author of a new study published in the journal Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough our study and examination of well-preserved fossils collected throughout the north Texas region, we have evidence of violence within this species to a degree not previously seen in other Tylosaurus specimens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"T<\/p>\n

T rex (Perot Museum of Nature and Science)<\/p>\n

Researchers analysed fossils kept at the American Museum of Natural History as well as more than a dozen similar samples held at other institutions, following suspicion that they represented a different animal.<\/p>\n

These fossils had finely serrated teeth, a trait uncommon among mosasaurs.<\/p>\n

They were also four million years younger than the species Tylosaurus proriger to which the specimen were thought to belong.<\/p>\n

\"Tylosaurus<\/p>\n

Tylosaurus rex holotype skeleton (Perot Museum of Nature and Science)<\/p>\n

Researchers arrived at the name T rex in homage to the palaeontologist John Thurmond, who first recognised tylosaurs as a new species in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

The species had exceptionally strong jaw and neck muscles, suggesting that it was a powerful predator.<\/p>\n

One T rex specimen housed in the Perot Museum\u2019s collection, nicknamed \u201cThe Black Knight\u201d, is missing the tip of the snout and has a fractured lower jaw, damage scientists claim could only be inflicted by its own species.<\/p>\n

The findings suggest that relationships of known mosasaur species need to be re-examined, as most prior studies relied on the same, minimally modified dataset for decades.<\/p>\n

\"Tylosaurus<\/p>\n

Tylosaurus rex reconstruction (Alderon Games)<\/p>\n

Now, researchers have assembled a comprehensively revised mosasaur fossil sample dataset, which could lead to a new arrangement of evolutionary relationships among tylosaurs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt highlights the need to revisit long-standing assumptions about mosasaur evolution and to modernise the tools we use to study these iconic marine reptiles,\u201d said Amelia Zietlow, a co-author of the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese findings reshape both the physical and evolutionary picture of mosasaurs, underscoring Texas as a key region for understanding ancient marine ecosystems and signalling a new era of research into the evolutionary history of these formidable predators,\u201d said Michael Polcyn, another study author,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have discovered a new marine dinosaur species that grew 43ft and terrorised the seas over 80 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[92365,49,48,186710,251285,66,179443],"class_list":["post-685766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-american-museum-of-natural-history","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mosasaur","tag-perot-museum-of-nature-and-science","tag-science","tag-t-rex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}