Paleontologists in Canada have actually discovered a 75-million-year-old skeleton of a juvenile of the tyrannosaurid dinosaur Gorgosaurus libratus with the remains of 2 young people of the little dinosaur Citipes elegans in its stomach cavity.
A juvenile of Gorgosaurus libratus eating Citipes elegansImage credit: Julius Csotonyi/ Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology/ University of Calgary.
Tyrannosaurids are a group of meat-eating dinosaurs that controlled the environments of Asia and North America near completion of the Cretaceous duration, in between 80 and 66 million years earlier.
Amongst the biggest land predators to have actually ever existed, they grew from meter-long hatchlings to multiton sizes (9- to 12-m long, 2,000 to 6,000 kg) throughout their life expectancy.
Juveniles were gracile with narrow skulls, blade-like teeth, and long slim hind limbs, whereas grownups were robust with enormous skulls and big incrassate teeth and can creating bone-crushing bites.
These modifications recommend that tyrannosaurids went through a significant dietary shift, in which juvenile and adult people inhabited various eco-friendly specific niches.
Fossil proof exposes that dinosaurian megaherbivores (i.e.,