Saturday, September 19, 2009 | Science : Archaeology | print version

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'Tiny T-rex' fossil unearthed in China

by Ian Sample - guardian.co.uk

Thanks to LWS for the link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/17/tiny-t-rex-fossil

Fossil hunters have unearthed the remains of a man-sized forerunner to the colossal Tyrannosaurus rex from an ancient lake bed in northeastern China.

The remarkable discovery has allowed dinosaur experts to piece together a picture of a diminutive but formidable predator that was so finely tuned to killing they describe it as "Jaws on legs".

The beast, named Raptorex kriegsteini, roamed the Earth 130m years ago, tens of millions of years before the giant T-rex became the most fearsome predator in history.

The finding has stunned palaeontologists because the skeleton resembles the larger tyrannosaurs in every respect except its size. Measurements of bones recovered from the site reveal that the new species was one hundredth the size of T-rex.

Analyses of the remains by researchers at the University of Chicago and the American Museum of Natural History in New York revealed the dinosaur to be a juvenile of five or six years old, measuring nearly 3m from nose to tail and weighing only 60kg (nine stone). A similar aged T-rex could weigh several tonnes.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/sep/17/tiny-t-rex-fossil

Posted: Saturday, September 19, 2009 | Permalink

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1. Comment #417077 by Gnuatheist on September 19, 2009 at 1:54 pm

You know, as varied and far reaching as were all the known species of dinosaurs, not to mention the countless forms that we've yet to encounter in the fossil record, it's hard to believe that Noah couldn't have saved just one pair. Sigh.

First.

And I only said that 'cause it's the first time I've been first, so, sorry, I won't do it again.

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2. Comment #417082 by guyinsfca on September 19, 2009 at 2:11 pm

funny Gnuatheist .... congrats on the first .... to add to that ... god keeps putting "new" things to find in the fossil record to make people question "his" existence. why i wonder?

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3. Comment #417085 by Harvatos on September 19, 2009 at 2:16 pm

Yup, "God" seem very keen on creating thing that disprove is existence. So weird... lol...

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4. Comment #417089 by fossil-fish on September 19, 2009 at 2:31 pm

You are all very unkind. Just think how cowded the world was when god made it. Poor Adam with all that mucking out.

Some of those things bite you know.

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5. Comment #417090 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 2:33 pm

I read this a couple of days ago. Very interesting. Gnu, they all drowned in the flood. Dude, you gotta keep up with this stuff. Seriously, if anyone knows who the idiot evangelist is who screeches with a T-rex skull model on stage and says that dinos still roam the Congo, I'd greatly appreciate you posting a link. I saw him on TV once a few years ago, but didn't write his name down.

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6. Comment #417091 by TIKI AL on September 19, 2009 at 2:37 pm

This little guy must have lead a very frustrating life, never being able to give a raptor the finger in a trail rage incident.

Have they found any 1-100th T-rex saddles yet?

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7. Comment #417094 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 2:41 pm

This is just a wild-ass, speculative, under-informed question from a non-scientist, but I wonder if the forelimbs of these dinos were possibly sexually selected?

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8. Comment #417095 by thomas guihen on September 19, 2009 at 2:46 pm

Border - Well the explorer's name is William Gibbons - I have a link here which you may be interested in - http://www.icr.org/article/306

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9. Comment #417102 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 3:42 pm

Thomas, thanks for the link. Maybe I can find that crazy evangelist again someday. He is a total hoot to watch.
It would be utterly fascinating to find some sort of dino in Africa, but these stories remind me of all other 'monster' stories. They had glimpses of them, they've heard them, they've seen their footprints, they found a scale/hair/tooth, etc., and later lost or misplaced it, and the river/path/road was blocked or they forgot to turn the camera on or whatever. The monsters are always just outside the range of perception and evidence.

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10. Comment #417107 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 4:26 pm

I did find this little gem ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa_hkp4_4Ac

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11. Comment #417111 by thomas guihen on September 19, 2009 at 4:42 pm

Border - But it wouldn't be necessarily true to refer to it as a dinosaur anyway even if such a creature did exist given the obvious fact that it's ancestors would have died out at least 65 million years ago. Would it not have mutated into something else? Having said that, the crocodile's ancestory can apparently be traced back 200 million years. This makes sense when you consider that they are particularly insulated against extinction. Firstly, they are pack animals like lions or elephants, so propogation of the species isn't a problem. Secondly, they are amphibibious which means they can adapt to wet and dry environments. Thirdly and finally, they are at the very top of the food chain - notwithstanding us - so have no fear of being preyed upon. As you can see, collectively that adds up to some serious survival instinct. And to make it even better the Australian saltwater is protected by law; you can't even kill it! Not that you should of course, discounting the obvious, but just saying. Seriously though, magnificent creatures that provide a direct link to a time long before Man ever came into existence.

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12. Comment #417117 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 5:03 pm

Thomas ... true. Mostly just fantasizing. The remote possibility is fascinating to ponder, however. Now, whether they'll be saddle-broken is another story.

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13. Comment #417130 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 5:54 pm

11. Comment #417111 by thomas guihen

A useful analogy for evolution is "hill climbing" in fitness space. Imagine a rugged terrain, and you need to find the highest hill blindfold. You tap the ground to the North, East, W. and S. with your foot and step in the direction of the highest ground. Keep repeating the method until all the ground around you is lower. You are now on top of a "hill". It may not be the highest, so it is the "local hilltop. In evolution the rigged landscape is "fitness space" - the higher up hill an organism can get the fitter (in the current ecosystem). Mutations are just the steps. If uphill is currently "North", then any rare offspring with a "South" mutation will not survive as well as those rare offspring with a "North" mutation. Hence, the genotype of a species tends to migrate "uphill" as a statistical tendency over time. However, once it reaches a hilltop it has nowhere to go - all mutations are haharmful. Thus a species could stay stable for 200 million years.

There are caveats of course. I suspect the "hill top" is actually a vast plateau in gene-space which the species wanders around in - i.e. many mutations are neutral.

Secondly, the fitness landscape is relative to the species' current ecosystem. If anything changes, climate or another species (pray or parasite) the "fitness landscape" itself will change.

Thirdly, "schema theory" (I think - its been too long) was developed for genetic algorithms in computer science which proposed re-combination of genes (e.g. sex) could randomly place an offspring on the slops of an unexplored mountain in gene-space, from parents who were only on hilltops. I have no idea if this idea crossed back into biology. Presumably if the individuals of a species are all on a plateau in gene-space every recombination can be on the same plateau.

So I see crocodiles (and other "living fossils") as having found a pretty good mountain top plateau in gene-space millions of years ago and have been fortunate enough that the plateau has stayed in place as climate has changed and other species have come and gone.

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14. Comment #417133 by SaintStephen on September 19, 2009 at 6:09 pm

6. Comment #417091 by TIKI AL on September 19, 2009 at 2:37 pm

This little guy must have lead a very frustrating life, never being able to give a raptor the finger in a trail rage incident.

Have they found any 1-100th T-rex saddles yet?

Hee hee hee!!!

Other Comments by SaintStephen

15. Comment #417143 by thomas guihen on September 19, 2009 at 6:38 pm

God fearing Atheist - Thanks for that. I would be prone to imagining it more as a pyramid structure with carnivores at the top, omnivores in the middle and vegetarians at the bottom, but that appears rather basic compared to your interpretation which is comparitively more three-dimensional in scope. It's not that I don't understand it, just rather that I would never have visualised it in that way. Excellent nonetheless.

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16. Comment #417146 by Border Collie on September 19, 2009 at 6:55 pm

Quote of the day (from another site):

"clearly dinosaurs existed alongside humans. and if it werent for chuck norris, theyd still be alive."

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17. Comment #417151 by SaintStephen on September 19, 2009 at 7:12 pm

13. Comment #417130 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 5:54 pm

Yes, THANK YOU. Lucid, Sir, lucid.

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18. Comment #417156 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 7:37 pm

15. Comment #417143 by thomas guihen

Ok, so now I can expand ...

In 2 dimensions, with hills in fitness space, all you have is a di-peptide. There are 20 amino acids used in living organisms. Polymerize 2 of them and you can imagine a 20 by 20 grid (c.f. 8 by 8 chess board) where every grid cell has a fitness height. If you have a tri-peptide, it turns into a 20 by 20 by 20 cube with a "fitness" in each grid cell. However, useful proteins (e.g. enzymes) are hundreds to thousands of amino acids long. So, for instance, all the 250-peptides can be represented in an 250 dimensonal hyper-cube 20 by 20 by 20 by 20 .... by 20. Given that in that space all 250 long proteins can be represented, they potentially have hundreds of biological functions, so in each grid cell many different fitness could be theoretically assigned. Natural selection therefore searches for "fitness peaks" in that 250-dimensional space. Given the multiple potential functions, it also becomes apparent how a protein evolving for one function can be co-opted for another.

As one amino acid is encoded by three DNA/RNA base pairs, and there are four base pairs, evolution is actually a hill climb in 4 * 4 * 4 * 4 .... gene space. I think the human genome is about 3.4 million base pairs - ie a 3.4 million dimensional hyper-cube! That space encodes all possible organisms with 3.4 million base pairs, each of which have a fitness in the current ecosystem. (Only a very very very tiny fraction of that vast possible number are capable of sustaining life for even a second - the rest have a fitness of, lets say, zero)

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19. Comment #417159 by Steve Zara on September 19, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Comment #417156 by God fearing Atheist

I like the term "fitness peaks".

There is even more complexity in the model. Fitness peaks aren't fixed. As the "landscape" of fitness is explored, the landscape itself shifts.

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20. Comment #417162 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 8:02 pm

19. Comment #417159 by Steve Zara

"Fitness peak" probably comes from Stuart Kauffman. I can't remember. I believe you are familiar with his work.

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21. Comment #417164 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 8:07 pm

19. Comment #417159 by Steve Zara

There is even more complexity in the model. Fitness peaks aren't fixed. As the "landscape" of fitness is explored, the landscape itself shifts.

Did you see my post 13. Comment #417130 where I wrote "in the current ecosystem", or are you writing about something else?

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22. Comment #417167 by Steve Zara on September 19, 2009 at 8:15 pm

Comment #417164 by God fearing Atheist

I am afraid I had not read your previous post. I now see you have clearly covered what I was talking about.

Very useful posts, if I may say so. Both ranked as excellent.

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23. Comment #417171 by Stafford Gordon on September 19, 2009 at 8:52 pm

Sadly,I don't think it'll make a jot or title of difference to our creationist friends; I say friends becaue we all live in the same universe, if only they could bring themselves to understand the fact.

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24. Comment #417181 by Flapjack on September 19, 2009 at 10:23 pm

@ Border Collie -
Reminds me of a Ren and Stimpy episode in which they visit the Natural History Museum and the museum curator gives them a whole series of increasingly implausible extinction theories. Eventually he cracks under pressure to come up with one that makes sense and shouts "ALRIGHT,I ADMIT IT... I KILLED THE DINOSAURS... I RAN THEM ALL OVER IN MY TRUCK!"

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25. Comment #417184 by bluebird on September 19, 2009 at 10:37 pm

Dr. Sereno was a guest on NPR ScienceFriday to discuss this new finding:
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200909182

More!
http://www.projectexploration.org/raptorex/

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26. Comment #417210 by SaintStephen on September 20, 2009 at 1:01 am

18. Comment #417156 by God fearing Atheist on September 19, 2009 at 7:37 pm

*Jaw drops* Wow, that's amazingly cool. I learned matrix theory via finite element analysis, so I can imagine what you're saying.

I wish I'd studied this stuff instead of ancient steam engine mechanics.

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27. Comment #417248 by seabala on September 20, 2009 at 4:38 am

I wish I'd studied this stuff instead of ancient steam engine mechanics.

Haha...You can say dat again!.. I gave up working on watertube boilers and reaction turbines on ships and became a 3D artist.

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28. Comment #417251 by seabala on September 20, 2009 at 4:56 am

I always thought the forearms of the T rex were vestigial and started shrinking when it didn't use them much after standing on its legs. Now this guy has forearms of similar proportion to t-rex. so is there any known ancestor with longer forearms?

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29. Comment #417275 by Jos Gibbons on September 20, 2009 at 7:14 am

Comment #417156 by God fearing Atheist

There are a couple of minor maths errors there, like the fact that peptides AB and BA are identical molecules and therefore there are actually fewer peptides than you think. However, there is one thing worth mentioning without pedantry: it's billion, not million. Mind you, of those 3.4 billion only a tiny fraction is used to make proteins anyway (albeit far more than one thousandth).

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30. Comment #417305 by RightWingAtheist on September 20, 2009 at 11:24 am