‘The missing link’: New early tyrannosaur species discovered by Calgary researchers
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $1.44 a week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks. After 52 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/06/2025 (493 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CALGARY – Scientists from the University of Calgary have discovered a new dinosaur specimen that they say appears to be the “missing link” in the evolution of tyrannosaurs.
The specimen was originally discovered in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert over 50 years ago in the 1970s. But its significance wasn’t recognized until Darla Zelenitsky, an associate professor in the university’s faculty of science, sent graduate student Jared Voris to Mongolia on a research trip.
“He was there a couple of years ago on this research trip and looked at the fossil and texted me (that) he thought it was a new species. I was like, ‘yay,'” Zelenitsky told The Canadian Press.
“I said, ‘This is good, but we don’t want to jump the gun on this.’ It turned out it (was) a new species.”
The species, Khankhuuluu mongoliensis — meaning “Dragon Prince” or “Prince of Dragons of Mongolia” — is believed to have crossed via a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska roughly 85 million years ago.
Zelenitsky said it appears to sit on the evolutionary scale between smaller tyrannosauroids and tyrannosaurs.
“It’s the missing link between smaller tyrannosauroids and the large predatory tyrannosaurs,” she said.
“This missing link was around 750 kilograms. Its ancestors were a couple of hundred kilograms and just tiny, but then when you get to tyrannosaurs proper, they were over a thousand kilograms, up to estimates of 5,000 kilograms.”
The findings were published Wednesday in the British weekly scientific journal “Nature.”
“It’s really exciting to be involved in a discovery of something that’s been sitting in a drawer for 50 years. But it’s even more exciting when it’s a PhD student that makes that discovery,” Zelenitsky added.
“This discovery forced us to look at the family tree of tyrannosaurs in a very different light. It ended up with us rewriting the family history of tyrannosaurs.”
The arrival of Khankhuuluu or a similar species after moving from Asia to North America may have been the result of following their prey to a new location, said Zelenitsky.
“It’s possible that there weren’t many tyrannosaur type predators so it’s possible they were able to take over that niche in North America and moved to the top of the food chain,” she said.
“Tyrannosaurs were in the right place at the right time. It allowed them to diversity and evolve a large body size, ultimately becoming the massive apex predator that terrorized North America and Asia during the late Cretaceous period.”
Zelenitsky said the evolution to the tyrannosaur happened rapidly, geologically speaking, and probably took a few million years.
She has co-authored over 50 different publications during her career and was part of a team that first found evidence of feathered dinosaurs in North America.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2025.
