Skull Found in Museum Believed From a Pygmy Tyrannosaurus Rex

A misidentified dinosaur skull found in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s basement came from a previously unknown meat-eating reptile that was a pygmy cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex , scientists say.

The skull was found on a southeast Montana farm 46 years ago by a museum expedition but was misidentified as a gorgosaur, a relatively primitive, common carnivore, scientists said at a news conference Thursday.

The new genus has been named Nanotyrannus , or “pygmy tyrant,” by the scientists who discovered it.

“This animal is so different from any other meat-eater that it merits its own branch of the tyrannosaur family tree,” said Robert T. Bakker, adjunct curator of paleontology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Skull Found in Basement

Bakker said he found the skull, believed to be the only Nanotyrannus specimen, when rummaging around the museum’s basement last spring.

“The best place in North America to find new (kinds) of dinosaurs . . . is to look in basements,” he said. “There are never enough scientists to study specimens as soon as they come out of the crate. This came out of the crate in 1942. But no one did a detailed study.”

T. rex roamed the Earth about 60 million years ago. Nanotyrannus resembled the bigger dinosaur but was only about one-third as large and one-tenth as heavy. It probably weighed less than 1,000 pounds, stood about 10 feet tall, walked on its hind legs and measured about 17 feet from nose to tail, Bakker said.

The skull, about 22 inches long and 10 inches high, is about the size of a brown bear’s head, he said.

Nanotyrannus had the same advanced anatomical features as T. rex , including eye sockets that faced forward instead of sideways and a neck joint that bent downward.