Three children in North Dakota have made a surprising discovery of a rare teenage Tyrannosaurus rex fossil, which scientists say could rewrite our understanding of the iconic dinosaur.
The children, including brothers Liam and Jessin Fisher, 7 and 10 years old at the time, and their cousin, 9-year-old Kaiden Madsen, made the discovery during a walk in the Hell Creek badlands area of North Dakota in July, 2022.
They first thought that the large fossilised leg bone they spotted likely belonged to a duckbill dinosaur and sent a photo of it to family friend Tyler Lyson, an associate curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
Dr Lyson then organised an excavation, which included the boys and a sister, Emalynn Fisher, now 14, to his team of volunteers and experts.
Researchers soon found that what they had was a a very rare juvenile specimen of T rex that likely died about 67 million years ago on the spot.
“Juvenile rex specimens are extremely rare. This find is significant to researchers because the ‘Teen Rex’ specimen may help answer questions about how the king of dinosaurs grew up,” Dr Lyson, who also found his first dinosaur fossil in the same area when he was a child, said.
The size of the specimen’s shin bone was about 82cm, compared to that of a full grown adult’s, which is around 112cm – suggesting that the new fossil belonged to a T rex that was about 13 to 15 years old when it died.
Scientists say the teen T rex may have been about two-thirds the size of a full grown adult.
They estimated that it weighed about 1,632kg (3,500lbs), measuring around 7.6m (25ft) from nose to tail and standing about 3m (10ft) in height.
“It’s remarkable to consider how T rex might have grown from a kitten-sized hatchling into the 40 ft, 8,000 lb adult predator we are familiar with,” paleontologist Thomas Holtz from the University of Maryland said.
“Scientists can really only speculate on how ‘Teen rex’ might have lived and behaved, so discoveries like this one have the potential to provide important new information about those earlier life stages, when fastest growth likely occurred,” Dr Holtz added.
The fossil find was kept a secret since its 2022 discovery while a film crew, palaeontologists, museums, and animators collaborated to present the children’s discovery as an immersive documentary.
Giant Screen Films (GSF) made the documentary, which brings the iconic T. rex from hatchling to a hulking adult to life.
The documentary also includes footage of famous specimens, landmark discoveries, and wild cinematic depictions of T rex over the last century.
“Kids finding any large dinosaur is remarkable, but as the shoot progressed, the team realized that we were witnessing something even more rare – a truly historic T. rex discovery. It’s been a real thrill,” producer and writer Andy Wood said.
“This is the kind of story that documentary filmmakers dream of capturing,” co-director and writer David Clark added.
