Not much is known Daspletosaurus, a late Cretaceous theropod that thrived in the forests of North America 75 million years ago. Now, paleontologists have shed literal light on one of the animal’s mysteries, by performing computed tomography scans of two dinosaur cases to digitally reconstruct adjacent brains and structures.
Daspletosaurus first it was a meat-eating dinosaur described in 1970; it is a tyrannosaurus, that is, it is part of the family Tyrannosauridae, the group that includes Tarbosaurus, Albertosaurus, and of course Tyrannosaurus Rex, among other similar terrifying predators. The research team examined two Daspletosaurus skulls: one found near Alberta, Canada’s Red Deer River, in 1921, and another excavated near the province’s Milk River at the turn of the millennium.
The two specimens are about 2 million years apart, a blink in terms of the evolution of dinosaurs. At more than 70 million years old, they are too old for any soft tissue to remain intact. But computed tomography is not only great for non-invasively analyzing complex structures such as the brain, they can even be useful when the brain is gone. In this case, the research team was able to trace some structures hidden in the two skulls that offer a glimpse of how the dinosaurs made sense of their surroundings. His work, published today, in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, we found differences between animal huts, suggesting that tyrannosaur skulls may have had more variations than previously thought.
Compared to other anatomical structures influenced by natural selection, “the brain is a very conservative organ … the bones around it are also considered to change little,” said Tetsuto Miyashita, a paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature and lead author of the study. an email.
“It was thought that this was true for dinosaurs, but since we used to have access to so few stoves, we are only recently discovering in tyrannosaurs that this star actually varies greatly from one species to another, or even within ‘a species,’ Miyashita explained.
G / O Media may receive a commission
This is a great feature of the recent study: that, based on the shapes of the two skulls and their respective ear structures, casals, and dimensions, the animals may represent two different species, which would be the first for daspletosaurs. (The brain box is the specific part of the skull that holds the brain; therefore, it offers a unique insight into how the nerves and senses of dinosaurs worked.)
In the paper, researchers describe Daspletosaurus (specifically Daspletosaurus torosus) as a bit of an alternative classification for tyrannosaurs in western North America that are clearly not a similar animal Albertosaurus or T. rex. As a result, daspletosaurs emerge in an “unusually wide” strip of the continent, although researchers wrote in the journal month recently work has begun to examine these mislabeled creatures.
The new work follows studies that clarify the species of Daspletosaurus; Miyashita and her colleagues spent hundreds of hours scanning the internal spaces of the two fossils, which belonged to animals that lived in the late Cretaceous. With a unique vision in his head, the team found channels that housed nerve bundles connected to the dinosaurs ’eyes. They also detected air sacs — a common feature in modern theropods and birds — in many of the bones of the mind.
“The cavities in the bones not only make the huge skull lighter, but it is also related to the middle region of the ear. Probably, the cavities helped amplify the sound and help the system that communicates in the left and right ears, which allows the brain to determine where a sound comes from, “said Ariana Paulina Carabajal, a paleontologist specializing in dinosaur cases. at the Universidad Nacional de Comahue in Argentina and co-author of the document, a Press release.
Although both fossils had these characteristics, they varied, with one specimen having a single-looking sinus and some more evocative internal features of other tyrannosaurus species, such as Gorgosaurus i Bistahieversor. Miyashita said the work was just the first step in separating specimens that were thought to be a single species, Daspletosaurus torosus. The team will then check the rest of the body of the most recently discovered Daspletosaurus. We could have a new meat-eating dinosaur on our hands soon.
More: Utah’s mass death site reinforces the theory that tyrannosaurs hunted in packs