London:
Australian scientists have found the first evidence that Tyrannosaur dinosaurs stalked the southern hemisphere continents.
The fossil of a hip bone from a small T.Rex was discovered in the southern state of Victoria and is believed to date back to around 110 million years ago, reports dailymail.co.uk.
Previously tyrannosaur fossils have only been found in northern continents.
But compared with the ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex made famous in the Hollywood film "Jurassic Park", the Australian T-Rex was only about one-third its size.
The discovery of the bone has raised further questions as to why only T. Rex in the northern hemisphere evolved into giant predators.
"The existence of this hip bone shows that about 100 million years ago, in the early Cretaceous period, small tyrannosaurs were found in other parts of the world," said Tom Rich, senior curator of Vetebrate Paleontology at Museum Victoria.
"This discovery changes our understanding of the evolution of this group of dinosaurs," he added.
The finding comes after separate research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal revealed that dinosaurs came to rule the world as a direct result of a mass extinction similar to the one the killed them off.
Before the dinosaurs came to prominence, the world was ruled by armour-plated crocodile-like creatures called crurotarsans.
Scientists pieced the events together by combining fossil finds with the carbon signature found in the preserved remains of ancient leaves and wood.
They established that after the lava flows, the crurotarsan fossil record was 'nearly completely gone'.
The crurotarsans had been competing strongly with the earliest dinosaurs, which were then limited in size but went on to become some of the biggest land animals ever known.
The fossil of a hip bone from a small T.Rex was discovered in the southern state of Victoria and is believed to date back to around 110 million years ago, reports dailymail.co.uk.
Previously tyrannosaur fossils have only been found in northern continents.
But compared with the ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex made famous in the Hollywood film "Jurassic Park", the Australian T-Rex was only about one-third its size.
The discovery of the bone has raised further questions as to why only T. Rex in the northern hemisphere evolved into giant predators.
"The existence of this hip bone shows that about 100 million years ago, in the early Cretaceous period, small tyrannosaurs were found in other parts of the world," said Tom Rich, senior curator of Vetebrate Paleontology at Museum Victoria.
"This discovery changes our understanding of the evolution of this group of dinosaurs," he added.
The finding comes after separate research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal revealed that dinosaurs came to rule the world as a direct result of a mass extinction similar to the one the killed them off.
Before the dinosaurs came to prominence, the world was ruled by armour-plated crocodile-like creatures called crurotarsans.
Scientists pieced the events together by combining fossil finds with the carbon signature found in the preserved remains of ancient leaves and wood.
They established that after the lava flows, the crurotarsan fossil record was 'nearly completely gone'.
The crurotarsans had been competing strongly with the earliest dinosaurs, which were then limited in size but went on to become some of the biggest land animals ever known.
