Researchers claim to have finally identified a small-bodied dinosaur that fueled decades of paleontological contention, with significant consequences for everyone’s favorite extinct carnivore—the Tyrannosaurus rex .

Scientists have long debated whether a skull unearthed in 1946 in Montana’s approximately 65.5-million-year-old Hell Creek Formation was a young T. rex or a newly discovered species, which researchers named Nanotyrannus lancensis . A complete skeleton also from the Hell Creek Formation and unearthed in 2006, however, may have settled the matter. According to a study published today in the journal Nature, these two small dinosaurs represent a distinct species—a conclusion that is sure to give the paleontological community serious whiplash.

Rewriting T. rexes?

That’s

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