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Savage Face Biting Incident
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24-09-2009 1:37pm#1While small teeth gashes to the face among tyrannosaurs are common enough, for the first time ever we now have evidence of a tyrannosaur who chomped one of it's own kin in the face so hard that it left a piece of tooth embedded in it's skull and possibly even killed it!
While Gorgosaurus (whose name appropraitely enough means 'fierce lizard') was smaller than it's famous cousin T.rex, it was certainly just as nasty.It's rare to find dinosaur teeth embedded on others' bones, and the find is a first for confirming tyrannosaur-on-tyrannosaur violence.
It also comes with a CSI-like forensic twist: There is no new bone growth around or over the tooth, indicating that bitten dinosaur died within two weeks after being wounded.
That opens up an additional possibility: cannibalism. The bitten animal may have already been dead before it was chomped.
[Phil] Currie doesn't think so, though tyrannosaurs had strong teeth, but the one they found embedded in the jaw bone isn't whole; it's been snapped off.
"That kind of torque suggests both animals were alive and fighting when this happened," he said. "There are animals well adapted to biting through bone. It doesn't make sense that the tooth would break if it was biting something that was dead already."
Full article here.
If you would like to know more about small (but fierce!) tyrannosaurs, click here.3
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