CANNAB, Utah – The Bureau of Land Management published a new study accusing the dreaded Tyrannosaurus rex of traveling in packets and not being lone hunters as previously thought.
The study, released Monday, comes from years of work at a fossil site inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
Dr. Alan Titus, of BLM Palentologg, discovered the Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry site in 2014.
“We immediately realized that this site could be used to test the idea of social tyrannosaurs. Unfortunately, the ancient history of the place is complicated, “said Titus. “With the bones that seem to have been exhumed and reburied by the action of a river, the original context in which they were found has been destroyed. However, not everything has been lost.
“Utah’s new site adds to the growing body of evidence showing that tyrannosaurs were complex, large predators capable of common social behaviors in many of their living relatives, birds,” said Conservative Dr. Joe Sertich of dinosaurs from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “This discovery should be the turning point for rethinking how these major carnivores behaved and hunted in the northern hemisphere during the Cretaceous.”
Researchers believe the tyrannosaurs died during a flood that washed away their remains in a lake.
Aside from the 12 tyrannosaurs, the crew found fossils of other dinosaurs, turtles and a 12-foot-long Deinosuchus alligator.
The Bureau of Land Management is proud to announce new innovative research on the social behavior of tyrannosaurs. For more information, visit https://t.co/iWPtLzZvwe. pic.twitter.com/wq82eYRruo
– Utah Bureau of Land Management (@BLMUtah) April 19, 2021
Titus called it, “a particularly important place we found in 2014. A unique one, the first of its kind in the southern U.S.”
Fossils date back 76.4 million years.
The press release says investigators will be at the site for years to come.