CBC’s Quirks & Quarks has a segment about a tiny tyrannosaur that helps shed light on how T-rex grew so large.  The animal, Moros intrepodus, was found by Dr. Lindsay Zanno.  She’s head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and research professor at N.C. State University in Raleigh.  You might remember when she was at the Field Museum.  She spoke at an ESCONI general meeting about “Resurrecting Dinosaurs” back in 2009.  The paper appeared in Nature’s Communication Biology.

Scientists have discovered a fossil from oldest and tiniest Cretaceous tyrannosaur ever found in North America — one that’s baby-sized compared to its descendant, the ferocious and massive Tyrannosaurus rex.

But even a baby-sized tyrannosaur would have been intimidating. “It would have been 5 feet high at the head, so this is an animal that would have been able to stare you right in the eyes,” said Dr. Lindsay Zanno, the head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and a research professor at N.C. State University in Raleigh.

Her team had been working in Utah looking for fossils for ten years before they discovered what’s turned out to be a hind leg of a fully grown new mini tyrannosaur.

“When I first found these bones sticking out of the side of a hill and recognized them as being from a small theropod, it was really, really exciting for the team,” said Zanno.