T-Rex Relative s Skull Shows Signs of Inter-Species Violence and Possible Cannibalism
ByA new study has brought up the possibility that the Tyrannosaur sometimes attacked its own kind and was possibly even cannibalistic.
According to BBC News, a team of researchers analyzed the skull of a younger relative to the T. Rex, the Daspletosaurus. The skull showed clear signs of violence from a larger dinosaur in addition to most-mortem bite wounds.
Led by David Hone, of Queen Mary University in London, the team published their work in the journal PeerJ.
"This animal clearly had a tough life suffering numerous injuries across the head including some that must have been quite nasty," he said in a press release. "The most likely candidate to have done this is another member of the same species, suggesting some serious fights between these animals during their lives."
The Daspletosaurus remains were first discovered in Alberta, Canada in 1994, where the skull has been kept since. Hone's team determined the dinosaur to have been about six meters long and 500 kilograms in weight.
The skull's battle scars bore a close match to the teeth of a T. Rex, though they apparently did not lead to the dinosaur's death, as the bones showed signs of healing.
"There are a few on the skull which are pretty definitely bites from another big carnivore, and because we're dealing with Daspletosaurus, that pretty much means it has to be a tyrannosaur," Hone told Live Science. "Animals that tend to get into big face-to-face fights tend to be members of your same species."
The researchers also determined the post-mortem wounds to be caused by a T. Rex, refueling the cannibalism claim, an argument made in a 2010 study published in the journal PLOS One.
"So, probably, something bit into that, scrapped down through it and snapped or busted through the rest of the back of the jaw," Hone told Live Science. "That's the only postmortem one we got, or that we're confident about, but it's a pretty devastating one."