{"id":657412,"date":"2026-05-22T00:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/657412\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T00:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:06:09","slug":"ancient-species-from-time-of-dinosaurs-identified-by-d-fw-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/657412\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient species from time of dinosaurs identified by D-FW researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the saying goes, everything\u2019s bigger in Texas \u2014 it just so happens that applies to ancient marine lizards, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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On Thursday, researchers at the American Museum of Natural History, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science and Southern Methodist University announced they have identified a school-bus-sized lizard that once prowled the seas above North Texas. The research team detailed its findings in a study published in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The species, called Tylosaurus rex, is a\u00a0mosasaur, or a marine reptile that lived alongside dinosaurs. This \u201cT. rex of the sea\u201d ranged from approximately 25 to 45 feet long and was one of the later kinds of mosasaurs, which were wiped out by the asteroid impact 66 million years ago.<\/p>\n

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Originally classified as Tylosaurus proriger, another mosasaur, the new species is distinguished by its serrated, steak knife-type teeth, a larger body and significantly stronger musculature, as evidenced by enlarged attachment sites on the fossil for larger and more powerful jaw and neck muscles.<\/p>\n

The discovery is important because it adds to what paleontologists know about \u201cthe diversity of a really, really cool group that lived during the same interval of time the dinosaurs lived,\u201d said Barry Albright, a professor emeritus of earth science at the University of North Florida, who was not involved in the research. Albright also said the discovery \u201ccan provide more information on what species are related, and where in history certain adaptations in the mosasaur lineage appear.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Researchers still don\u2019t know how many species of mosasaurs there were, or how greatly they differed from one another. Studies like this can help inform future research in the field, said Takuya Konishi, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati with more than 15 years of experience studying mosasaurs, who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n

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Found by kids on a family boating trip<\/p>\n

The name-bearing specimen, or holotype, of T. rex was found in 1979, not by scientists, but by a family going on a boat ride in Lake Ray Hubbard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kids got a little antsy, started getting a little whiny,\u201d said Ron Tykoski, vice president of science and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Perot, who was a co-author on the study. \u201cSo the parents beached the boat and told their kids to get out and play on the shore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The kids happened upon some weird-looking rocks, which they showed to their mom. She thought the rocks looked eerily similar to large bones and contacted the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the predecessor of the Perot. Researchers rushed to the site and quickly realized these strange rocks were actually the bones of an ancient marine reptile that had been exposed by waves lapping at the shore. The skeleton was then collected and has been on display for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"(From<\/p>\n

(From left) Michael Polcyn, Senior Research Fellow, ISEM at Southern Methodist University, and Ron Tykoski, Vice President of Science and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, pose for a photo at the\u00a0Perot in Dallas, Tuesday, May 19, 2026.<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

Michael Polcyn, a senior research fellow at SMU and co-author on the study, said he first noticed something unique about these bones around 2012.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a groove on the rim of the quadrate that was not in any of the other species,\u201d Polcyn said. The quadrate, a multifunctional bone equivalent to the middle ear, is an anatomical feature frequently used by scientists to infer the relationships between species. \u201cIt was pretty unusual to see that in a tylosaurus.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Polcyn\u2019s sneaking suspicion wasn\u2019t new. In the late 1960s, when paleontologist John Thurmond was an SMU student, he noticed that the tylosaurus specimens recovered from northeast Texas were abnormally large and theorized they might belong to a new species. He informally dubbed the reptiles \u201cTylosaurus thalassotyrannus,\u201d or \u201csea tyrant.\u201d Polcyn said he stumbled across Thurmond\u2019s note decades after it was written.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was serendipity,\u201d Polcyn said. \u201cI came across that letter when I was looking for something else completely.\u201d Polcyn recounted how the discovery brought a smile to his face, confirming the research team was on the right path.<\/p>\n

Battle scars on some T. rex specimens suggest the species had a violent nature. A fossil discovered in North Texas in 2022<\/a> and nicknamed \u201cThe Black Knight\u201d has a slew of horrific injuries, including a fractured jaw and a missing portion of its snout.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The only animal that could have inflicted that level of damage must have been from the same species, Tykoski said. There were also signs of healing, showing the mosasaur survived the injuries. It\u2019s not the first mosasaur found with evidence of injuries likely inflicted by another of its kind, said Tykoski, but it is by far the worst.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Citizen scientists play a key role in fossil discovery<\/p>\n

Most of the new species in North Texas that have been named by researchers were found by local collectors and amateur fossil enthusiasts walking creek beds and open fields. Specimens like the holotype fossil and \u201cThe Black Knight\u201d are no exception, both being discovered by nonscientists.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Albright likened the role of citizen scientists in paleontology to that of amateur astronomers. \u201cJust think about how many amateur astronomers have found comets and asteroids,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn’t do this without the citizen scientists that actually are out there walking the outcrops every day,\u201d said Polcyn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas is one of the best places in the United States to hunt for these pieces of the past. Around 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, much of the state was covered by a shallow, nutrient-rich sea teeming with life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve probably got the most complete record of mosasaur evolution in one geographic area in the entire world, right here in Texas,\u201d Tyksoski said.<\/p>\n

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\"A<\/p>\n

A skeleton of a Tylosaurus rex, a type of\u00a0mosasaur, on display at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Tuesday, May 19, 2026.<\/p>\n

Juan Figueroa\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n

Although this research is rooted deep in the past, its implications extend far beyond it. As\u00a0Tykoski put it, \u201cThese ancient animals show us what is possible: What was possible in the past, and what could be possible in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sense of wonder brought on by their research, Tykoski says, is especially important for younger generations. Gesturing toward a rambunctious crowd of children ping-ponging from exhibit to exhibit in the Perot, Tykoski said: \u201cLook at all these people who have come here to see amazing things, to see things that are beyond their imagination and be inspired by it. These kids \u2014 hopefully, they see something in an exhibit like this, and it triggers a lifelong desire to learn more about the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the saying goes, everything\u2019s bigger in Texas \u2014 it just so happens that applies to ancient marine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79,252536,249346],"class_list":["post-657412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science","tag-tp-science-and-medicine","tag-tp-dallas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}