A Tyrannosaur bone found in Australia is the first found on the Southern Hemisphere. Scientist say that the discovery of a Tyrannosaur hip bone could possibly shed light on the evolutionary lineage of the ancient dinosaur and why they thrived above the equator and not below it.
Prior to the recent identification of a Tyrannosaur hip bone that had been discovered in Australia, Scientist believed that the Tyrannosaurus Rex had lived only in the Northern Hemisphere after the continents separated. Previously, such findings had only been made in Asia, Europe and North America.
The bones of the T-Rex discovered in Australia is much smaller and older than the bones of those found above the equator. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was the dominant predator in the Northern Hemisphere and lived during the Cretaceous period, about 70-million years ago. The Australian T.Rex lived about 110-million years ago, before the Cretaceous period, and was about one-third the size of it’s northern counterpart.
The Australian hip-bone was found in 1989 along with other fossils by Museum Victoria paleontologist Thomas Rich. It was discovered in Dinosaur Cove in Victoria. Last year, the Melbourne scientist took the fossils to University of Cambridge paleontologist Roger Benson and other European colleagues to see if they could identify them.
Tyrannosaur bone found in Australia is known as NMV P186069, an exciting scientific name. Unfortunately, the one hip-bone doesn’t give a great deal of information into the early version of the notorious T.Rex.
