Tyrannosaurus’s last meal. The first discovery of its kind in history

It is very rare to find hard evidence of what dinosaurs ate. for this reason Discovering the contents of a dinosaur’s stomach is a real achievement. “This makes this discovery particularly exciting,” said Darla Zelenitsky, a paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Alberta.

– Tyrannosaurus L Large predatory speciesWhich roamed North America in the late Cretaceous period. They walked on two legs and had very short arms, Zelenitsky said. – There was a dinosaur Cousin of the T-RexWhich appeared later, 68 to 66 million years ago. T. rex is the largest of the dinosaurs, Gorgosaurus She explained that it was a little smaller, with an adult measuring 9-10 meters long.

The dinosaur whose remains were discovered was a young Gorgosaurus libratus. He weighed about 350 kilograms and was four meters tall when he died. The predator was between 5 and 7 years old and, as scientists confirm, seemed to be very picky.

– for him The last and penultimate meals were small, bird-like dinosaurs,steps. He ate only the hind limbs of each victim. Zelenitsky confirmed that there were no other remains of these predators in the abdominal cavity, but only the hind limbs.

-He must have chased these two Steppes at different times back then He tore off his hind legs, ate them, and left the rest – she added. “This teenager clearly had an appetite for drumsticks,” she joked.

Scientists determined that the victims of the T. rex were juveniles of this species Setipes elegans. They were less than a year old when they became his meal.

barely A complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton was found in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park in 2009. It was not immediately clear whether the contents of the predator’s stomach were preserved. Researchers at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, noticed small bones sticking out while preparing the fossils in the laboratory. So they lifted the stone from the chest to look closely.

“In its stomach were the complete hind legs of two young dinosaurs, less than a year old,” said co-author François Therin, head of the museum’s paleoecology department.

The fossil discovered in 2009 is the first conclusive evidence of the existence of a long-suspected creature Feeding pattern of large predatory dinosaurs – said paleoecologist Kat Schroeder, a researcher at Yale University.

The baby T. rex didn’t eat what his parents ate. Paleontologists believe that its diet changed throughout its life. – Large, sturdy dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, had a bite powerful enough to crush bones“So we know they attacked large herbivores like Triceratops,” Schroeder said. “The young dinosaurs couldn’t afford that, so they didn’t leave these feeding marks,” she explained.

– At the moment of death The baby dinosaur weighed only 10 percent. Mass of an adult Gorgosaurus – confirmed Schroeder.

Source: “Scientific Progress”, CNN