College Student Identifies Bizarre New Carnivorous Dinosaur Three Times Older Than T. rex

A Virginia Tech undergraduate used CT scans and 3D reconstruction to identify a damaged Triassic skull as a new carnivorous dinosaur species, Ptychotherates bucculentus.

The fossil appears to be one of the last known herrerasaurians, a very early branch of dinosaur evolution.

The study adds rare evidence on how early dinosaurs diversified and how the end-Triassic extinction may have wiped out some lineages.

The research was led by Virginia Tech’s Simba Srivastava with guidance from Sterling Nesbitt and Michelle Stocker, and published in Papers in Palaeontology.