[Rockhounds] Controversial idea that T. rex was three species comes under fire

[Tim Fisher]

I had thought that to be a stretch lol. 

Tim Fisher
Http://OreRockOn.com 
Email nospam at orerockon.com



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From: Rockhounds [mailto:rockhounds-bounces at rockhounds.drizzle.com] On Behalf Of Kreigh Tomaszewski
Sent: Monday, July 25, 2022 10:02 AM
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Subject: [Rockhounds] Controversial idea that T. rex was three species comes under fire

A controversial claim made earlier this year that *Tyrannosaurus rex* should be split into three separate species has been rejected by another group of researchers.

In March, after analysing teeth and leg bones of 38 *T. rex *fossils, Scott Persons <https://geology.cofc.edu/about-the-department/faculty-and-staff/persons-scott.php>
at
the College of Charleston in South Carolina and his colleagues proposed that rather than there just being one iconic *“*tyrant lizard king*”, *there were three species.

According to Persons’s team, there was an early species, *Tyrannosaurus imperator *(tyrant lizard emperor), which subsequently evolved into two more recent species, one of which had a slender frame and thin thigh bones – called *Tyrannosaurus regina *(tyrant lizard queen). The other was more heavily built with stout thighs and retained the name *T. rex*. The team also found variation in the shape of teeth in fossilised lower jaws, saying this further supported the idea that *T. rex* should be considered as three species.

Now, a study by James Napoli
<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Napoli-2> at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and his colleagues has criticised the earlier work. His team found issues with the methods used by Persons’s group to separate the *T. rex* fossils into groups, based on thigh bone measurements.

By reanalysing the data with a method that makes fewer assumptions about how the specimens might be split into groups, Napoli’s team found that the fossils clustered as one group, rather than as separate species.

“I don’t think the data they provided is convincing,” says Napoli. “We found that the specimens simply cluster as one group, indicating a single species.”

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2330552-controversial-idea-that-t-rex-was-three-species-comes-under-fire/
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