Nanotyrannus Tooth
Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota
70-65 MYA
Determination of a new dinosaur species is not an exact science. Paleontologists and laboratory scientists base the species of a given fossil on experience with other examples that have been unearthed. Sometimes, when very few examples exist, a new find may be wrongly classified.
The Nanotyrannus may be one such species. Only two partial examples have been unearthed, the earliest one in 1942. Its original carried the name Gorgosaurus, in the Tyrannosaur genus, given by the paleontologist Charles Gilmore. Four decades later, renowned paleontologists Philip Currie and Robert Bakker determined it should be a different genus based on its skull sections being fused together, which research had shown is characteristic of adults. They named it Nanotyrannus in 1988.
However, paleontologist Thomas Carr did extensive research on the fossil in 1999, and determined it to be a young Tyrannosaurus rex. This was backed up in 2015 with the inspection of a thin slice of its femur, which indicated it was 11 years old, still a juvenile in dinosaur terms.
Is this the tooth of a baby T-rex? Or is it from a Nanotyrannus? Research continues, and until other examples are unearthed and studied by paleontologists, the arm wrestling between the fossil community will continue.
This specimen among the Oolkay Museum exhibits was acquired from a private party in Los Angeles, California in 2015.