Arctic’s Tyrannosaur Was a Tiny Terror

Tyrannosaurs included some of the largest carnivores of all time, but a new Arctic tyrant was a pipsqueak compared to T. rex.

Near the end of the Cretaceous, about 70 million years ago, tyrannosaurs were North America’s apex predators. From Teratophoneus in the south to Albertosaurus in the North, these deep-skulled, tiny-armed theropods were the most menacing dinosaurs of their time.

But not all of these Late Cretaceous predators were giants.

In a study published Wednesday in PLoS One, paleontologists Anthony Fiorillo and Ronald Tykoski of Dallas, Texas’ Perot Museum of Nature and Science have named a diminutive tyrannosaur that once trod beneath the Arctic’s northern lights.

The researchers have dubbed the dinosaur Nanuqsaurus hoglundi – a title combining the Iñupiaq word for

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