New dinosaur species, the 'Dragon Prince', discovered — what did it look like?
Hold onto your fossil hats, dinosaur lovers—there's a new prehistoric rockstar in town, and it goes by a name that sounds like it just flew out of a fantasy novel. Say hello to Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, nicknamed the 'Dragon Prince.
' And yes, it's just as cool as it sounds.
The findings have been published in
Nature
.
So, what exactly is Khankhuuluu?
This ancient predator stomped around what's now Mongolia about 86 million years ago, way before the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex came on the scene. Khankhuuluu was no tiny lizard—but it definitely wasn't the hulking beast T. rex turned out to be. Think of it as the lean, speedy older cousin that paved the way for future dinosaur royalty. It weighed 750 kilos.
The wild part? Scientists actually found Khankhuuluu's fossils back in the 1970s, but they thought it was part of a different species. Fast forward a few decades and some super high-tech scans later, and—boom!—turns out we've had a brand-new species hiding in plain sight this whole time. Talk about a plot twist in the fossil record.
What did it look like?
Unlike the bulky, bone-crushing T. rex, Khankhuuluu was all about agility. It had a slim build, long legs made for sprinting, and a narrow snout packed with sharp teeth—perfect for snapping up smaller prey like oviraptorosaurs and ornithomimosaurs.
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Picture a fast, fierce dino ninja with a serious attitude.
"'Prince' refers to this being an early, smaller tyrannosauroid," explained Prof Darla Zelenitsky, a palaeontologist from the University of Calgary in Canada told BBC. Tyrannosauroids are the superfamily of carnivorous dinosaurs that walked on two legs.
"They were these really small, fleet-footed predators that lived in the shadows of other apex predatory dinosaurs," PhD student Jared Voris, who led the research with Prof Zelenitsky, told the media.
They added that Khankhuuluu probably weighed around 750 kilos (about 1,650 pounds). Not bad for an early tyrannosaur, right?
A dino with a passport?
Besides being a missing puzzle piece in the tyrannosaur family tree, Khankhuuluu is also helping scientists figure out where these dinos came from and how they moved around. The new theory? Tyrannosaurs may have started in Asia, made their way to North America, and then boomeranged back to Asia.
This epic dino road trip might explain the range of species we've dug up across continents.
Why this matters
The discovery of the 'Dragon Prince' is more than just another cool name—it's a reminder that our planet's past is full of surprises waiting to be uncovered. Every fossil, every re-examined bone, tells a deeper story about where life came from and how it evolved.
So next time someone mentions the mighty T. rex, throw a little respect to its slimmer, faster, older cousin—Khankhuuluu mongoliensis, the prehistoric royalty that sprinted so the king could roar.
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