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Meet the T. rex cousin who you could literally look down on

Associated Press
1120572_web1_1120572-eaa0a64f83644198b5b838cb4043a0ee
AP
This illustration provided by Andrey Atuchin and Virginia Tech in May 2019 shows a Suskityrannus hazelae, foreground, a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex. It weighed between 45 and 90 pounds.
1120572_web1_1120572-d0cb406bf6534587a9c34a20000df338
AP
In this March 28, 2019 photo provided by Virginia Tech, Sterling Nesbitt, an Assistant Professor of Geobiology, sits for a photo next to the fossilized bones of Suskityrannus hazelae, a miniature adult Tyrannosaurus dinosaur relative, in Blacksburg, Va. He found some of the original fossils when he was 17 years old.
1120572_web1_1120572-9678f4a4d7c44f05abbde579659c526e
AP
This March 28, 2019 photo provided by Virginia Tech shows the fossilized bones of Suskityrannus hazelae, a miniature adult Tyrannosaurus dinosaur relative, in Blacksburg, Va., discovered by Sterling Nesbitt, an Assistant Professor of Geobiology. He found some of the original fossils when he was 17 years old.
1120572_web1_1120572-8e6ec9e36af84dafaa60e7a8f1676ac7
AP
This illustration provided by Andrey Atuchin and Virginia Tech in May 2019 shows a Suskityrannus hazelae, a cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex. It weighed between 45 and 90 pounds.

WASHINGTON — History’s most frightening dinosaur, the Tyrannosaurus rex, came from a long line of pipsqueaks.

Scientists have identified a new cousin of the T. rex as a dinosaur that only reached the 3-foot height of a toddler. If it stretched its duck-billed head, an adult human maybe “would be looking at it in the eye,” said Sterling Nesbitt, a paleontologist at Virginia Tech, who discovered the dinosaur.

Nesbitt found a set of its bones in 1998 when he was 16, while serving as a volunteer on a dig in New Mexico with a famed paleontologist. But for about two decades, scientists weren’t certain what it was, until other small cousins of T. rex were discovered.

“The small group of tyrannosauroid dinosaurs would give rise to some of the biggest predators that we’ve ever seen,” said Nesbitt, lead author of a study in Monday’s journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The new dinosaur is called Suskityrannus hazelae, named after the Zuni word for coyote. It dates back 92 million years, about 20 million years before the T. rex stomped the Earth.

The newly discovered cousin — which was three times longer than it was tall — weighed between 45 and 90 pounds, almost nothing compared to the nine-ton king of the dinosaurs.

Suskityrannus hazalae isn’t the first or even smallest of the Tyrannosaurus family tree, but Nesbitt said it provides the best example of how this family of modest-sized dinosaurs evolved into the towering horror of movies, television shows and nightmares.

Smithsonian Institution paleobiologist Hans Sues, who wasn’t part of the study, said it was an important find. “Suskityrannus is the first really good record of the early tyrannosaurs in North America,” he wrote in an email.

It is unclear why these carnivores, which weren’t particularly big compared with other dinosaurs alive at that time, later evolved to be so enormous.

Nesbitt said the newly discovered species is probably among the last of the little guys. It was bigger than earlier tyrannosauroids and had big feet needed for speed — something the T. rex lost.

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