T rex young 'hurt each other playing rough'
Young tyrannosaurs conducted play fights with each other that often ended in serious damage, US study says
Also In The News
|
By James Christie
Serena Williams justified her status as world number one by defeating defending champion Venus Williams 6-2, 7-6 (7-3) in the final of the end-of-season WTA Tour Championships in Doha. |  |
Monday, 02, Nov 2009 05:39
By Matthew Champion.
Young and adolescent tyrannosaurs conducted play fights with each other that often ended in significant damage, palaeontologists said today.
US researchers claim that bite marks found on the skull of a young Tyrannosaurus rex were signs of learning behaviour also found in modern-day crocodiles.
Palaeontologists from Northern Illinois University and the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford said such play fights had left the museum's juvenile T rex found in 2001 with a "boxer's nose".
The T rex, christened Jane after a museum donor, showed evidence of a serious bite that punctured the bone of the left upper jaw and snout in four places.
The injuries were not life threatening and healed, leaving scars still visible today.
"Her snout bends slightly to the left," Joe Peterson, lead author of the study, wrote in the journal Palaios. "It was probably broken and healed back crooked."
Mr Peterson and others who worked on the study said only another juvenile tyrannosaur could have been responsible for the rectangular bite marks.
"That leads us to believe she was attacked by a member of the same species that was about the same age," he said. "Because the wound had healed, we think this happened when Jane was possibly a few years younger."
Despite being about 11 or 12 when it died, Jane was still 22ft long and 7ft 6ins tall, making the dinosaur capable of "pretty serious combat".
It is the researchers' belief that the wounds inflicted were not over sexual conflict or competition but part of learning behaviour for young dinosaurs.