Virginia Tech paleontologist discovers new, miniature relative of Tyrannosaurus rex

[00:00:00] >> (Put the vertebra down) Piece by piece, Virginia Tech paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt lays out fossil remains of a newly discovered and newly named dinosaur. "This new animal is a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives." Nesbitt, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences says what's surprising is its size. [00:00:24] "We have most of the hind limbs and the vertebrae and parts of the skull, so it doesn't have that typical T-Rex look to it. It's much more small." About 3 feet tall at the hip, 9 feet in length and weighing up to 90 pounds, the miniature relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex would be only slightly longer than the entire skull of a fully grown T- Rex. [00:00:48] "T-Rex has a giant head, really small arms and big, powerful hind legs but they're pretty robust and stocky. This animal has an elongated face, unlike T-Rex's big, massive head and its hind limbs are very long." (The four limbs, we don't know for sure but they would probably only be about that long.) T-Rex and its closest relatives had a much smaller ancestors that would have looked like this new find which we're naming, Suskityrannus hazelae." The find, which Nesbitt discovered during a dig in New Mexico as a high school student, gives scientists a look into how the animals evolved before taking over the earth. [00:01:33] "These animals represent, kind of their ancestral body types for they become big and the more usual the ones that show up in kids' books. The ones tha