Pinocchio Rex
A new species of meat-eating dinosaur with an unusual long snout has been discovered.
A new species of tyrannosaur was recently unearthed by construction workers in southern China. Although it is smaller than its cousin T-Rex, the new tyrannosaur - dubbed Pinocchio Rex because of its long snout - was still a fierce carnivore. It weighed about one ton (compared to five for T-Rex) and was 9 metres in length, whereas its famous relative could measure up to 12 or slightly more. The new species was identified by a team, including Dr. Stephen Brusatte, a Vertebrate Paleontologist from the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The long snout enabled Pinocchio Rex to live alongside T-Rex because it had a different feeding strategy. With a less powerful, but quicker bite, it likely preyed on smaller, faster animals than its larger cousin did. Just like Tyrannosaurus Rex, Pinocchio Rex went extinct 66 million years ago.
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