A Tyrannosaurus tooth embedded in dinosaur skull tells a violent story
A rare dinosaur fossil on display at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, tells a bloody story. The skull of a large herbivore Edmontosaurus A tooth is lodged there, indicating that he may have lived his last moments in the form of a meal. The tooth in question belongs to one of the most famous dinosaurs on the planet…Tyrannosaurus.
Montana was once home to Tyrannosaurus rex, the most famous of several known members of the fearsome family Tyrannosauridae. This apex predator stomped around until the end of the dinosaur era, about 66 million years ago. It lived alongside large herbivores like Triceratops and the duck’s bill Edmontosaurus.
In 2005, paleontologists discovered a Edmontosaurus skull in the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation of eastern Montana. Now on display at the museum, a re-examination of the skull revealed a striking detail: a Tyrannosaurus tooth stuck inside his face. The results are detailed in a study published today in the journal PeerJ.
“Although bite marks on bones are relatively common, finding an embedded tooth is extremely rare,” Taia Wyenberg-Henzler, study co-author and doctoral student at the University of Alberta, said in a statement. “The benefit of an embedded tooth, especially in a skull, is that it gives you the identity of not only who was bitten, but also who bit them. This allowed us to build a picture of what happened to that tooth. Edmontosaurus, a bit like Cretaceous crime scene investigators.
By comparing the embedded tooth to all known prehistoric inhabitants of the Hell Creek Formation, they found that it closely matched the teeth of Tyrannosaurus. CT scans of the skull helped the team discover more details about the injury.
“A fossil like this is very exciting because it captures behavior: a tyrannosaurus biting the face of this duckbill,” added co-author and Museum of the Rockies paleontology curator John Scannella. “The skull shows no signs of healing around the Tyrannosaurus tooth, so it may have already been dead when it was bitten, or it may have died because it was bitten.”
Tyrannosaurus was one of the largest carnivores to ever walk the Earth, and paleontologists have studied its eating habits for decades. The tooth found inside Edmontosaurus the skull gives another look at Tyrannosaurus behavior. According to the team, the way the tooth is inserted into Edmontosaurus’ The nose suggests that the duck-billed dinosaur met its toothy attacker face to face. This usually happens to an animal that is ultimately killed by a predator.
“The amount of force required for a tooth to shatter into a bone also indicates the use of deadly force,” Wyenberg-Henzler said. “To me, this paints a terrifying picture of the final moments of this Edmontosaurus.”
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