T.rex's Opa

For Thomas - they suspect this find to be an early ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex and other tyrannosaurs.

Scientists find earliest known ancestor of T. rex:

A two-legged meat-eater, the beast was far smaller than T. rex, measuring about 10 feet from its snout to the tip of its tail and standing about 3 feet tall at the hip. It also sported relatively long, three-fingered arms, rather than the two-fingered stubby arms T. rex had. Scientists suspect it had feathers because related dinosaurs did.

From that I can't figure out why they'd think it's a tyrannosaur, but I'll take their word for it. I know Thomas will argue that the tyrannosaurs have two-fingered arms, but there you go. We'll have to head back to the ever increasing pile of dinosaur books, Tom.

Along with some other finds, the creature helps illustrate the sequence of anatomical changes that occurred along the way to the later, more specialized tyrannosaurs, said Philip Currie of the University of Alberta in Canada.

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