In China they have discovered a fossilized skeleton, about 125 million years old , of an ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex that is practically a perfect copy but in a "mini" version. The new dinosaur, named Raptorex kriegsteini, measured 3 meters long, weighed about 60 kilos and bearing was 100 times smaller than the famous predator Jurassic Pa rk.
According to scientists from the University of Chicago and the National Geographic Society in the journal Science , Raptorex was a carnivorous dinosaur with a head that was 1.2 meters long and a strong jaw that evolved to achieve the highest efficiency in the task of smash the bones of their prey. His arms, however, were tiny, and he had long lower limbs ready for running. "It was jaws on legs, " says Paul Sereno, co-author of the study. Furthermore, even the shape of the skull, with enlarged olfactory bulbs like the T. Rex , would have given it the same keen sense of smell as its successor.
The small but fearsome predator lived during the late Cretaceous in some regions of Africa, North America, and Asia.
