[Rockhounds] ‘Reaper of Death’ tyrannosaur discovered in Canada

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

JARED VORIS IS no stranger to death. By early 2018, the University of
Calgary master’s student had spent more than a year poring over bones in
museum collections, studying how tyrannosaurs matured from hatchlings into
hulking terrors. During one visit to the collections of Alberta’s Royal
Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, he noticed a cabinet with fossils he
couldn’t quite place.

Now, after two years of careful research, Voris and his colleagues have
identified the first new Canadian tyrannosaurid to be found in 50 years.
Stretching 26 feet in length, the dinosaur is named *Thanatotheristes*,
Greek for “reaper of death.”

Aged roughly 79.5 million years, *Thanatotheristes degrootorum *sits near
the base of the tyrannosaurs’ ascent to ecological domination. The
unearthed skull fragments—including upper and lower jawbones, teeth, and a
partial cheekbone—sketch out the early pages of how tyrannosaurids, the
tyrannosaur
<https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/prehistoric/tyrannosaurus-rex/>
subgroup
that includes* T. rex,* rose to power and became top predators.

“I tried to be really meticulous with identifying features that made it
unique,” says Voris, who is now a Ph.D. student at the University of
Calgary. “It’s interesting to have the opportunity to name a new
species—and I’m hoping it isn’t all downhill from here.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/new-reaper-of-death-tyrannosaur-discovered-canada/