KANAB, Utah The Bureau of Land Management has launched a new study that traveled the terrifying Tyrannosaurus rex in packs and were not lone hunters as previously thought.
The study, released Monday, comes from years of work on a fossil site inside the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.
BLM Palentologgist Dr. Alan Titus discovered the Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry site in 2014.
‘We immediately realized that this site could possibly be used to test the social tyrannosaurus idea. “Unfortunately, the ancient history of the site is complicated,” said Titus. ‘With the appearance that bones were excavated and reburied by the operation of a river, the original context in which it lay was destroyed. However, not everything was lost. ”
“The new website in Utah is contributing to the growing body of evidence showing that tyrannosaurs were complex, large predators that were able to have social behaviors common to many of their living relatives, the birds,” said Dr. Joe Sertich, curator of dinosaurs at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. “This discovery should be the turning point for reconsidering how these top carnivores behaved and hunted across the northern hemisphere during the Cretaceous.”
Researchers believe the Tyrannosaurs died during a flood that washed their remains into a lake.
Apart from the 12 Tyrannosaurs, the crew found fossils of other dinosaurs, turtles and a 12-foot Deinosuchus alligator.
The Bureau of Land Management is proud to announce new groundbreaking research on the social behavior of Tyrannosaurs! Visit https://t.co/iWPtLzZvwe for more information. pic.twitter.com/wq82eYRruo
Bureau of Land Management Utah (@BLMUtah) 19 April 2021
Titus calls it, “a particularly important website we found in 2014.” A unique species, the first of its kind from the southern United States’
The fossils date back 76.4 million years.
According to the news release, researchers will be at the site for years to come.