May 9, 2019

Sterling Nesbitt with the bones of Suskityrannus hazelae he discovered (Photo courtesy Virginia Tech. All rights reserved)

An article published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution” reports the identification of a new species of tyrannosauroid that lived about 92 million years ago, in the Mid-Cretaceous period. A team of researchers led by Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech named this species Suskityrannus hazelae completing a work begun in 1997, when the first fossils were discovered but weren’t identified at the time. It was a carnivore but with its height of less than one meter it was much smaller than its far more famous distant cousin, the T.rex.