The bite of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex left behind new evidence that the famous beast hunted for food and wasn’t just a scavenger.
Researchers found a part of a T. rex tooth wedged between two tailbones of a duckbill dinosaur unearthed in northwestern South Dakota. The tooth was partially enclosed by regrown bone, indicating the smaller duckbill had escaped from the T. rex and lived for months or years.
Since the duckbill was alive and not just a carcass when it met the T. rex, the fossil provides definitive evidence that T. rex hunted live animals, researchers say in today’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The fossil, from around 67 million years ago, indicates the T. rex bit the duckbill from behind and “intended to take it for a meal,” said David Burnham of the University of Kansas.