Evidence points out that "Nanotyrannus" is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex
Yeonsu High School, Incheon, South Korea
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Taxonomy, Zoology
- Keywords
- Tyrannosaurus rex, Nanotyrannus lancensis, Tyrannosauridae, Dinosauria
- Copyright
- © 2015 Yun
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Evidence points out that "Nanotyrannus" is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e852v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.852v1
Abstract
In this paper, I comment on Larson's 2013 paper "The case for Nanotyrannus". All the osteological differences proposed by Larson (2013) seem to be due to ontogeny and individual variation. Therefore, Larson's claim that "Nanotyrannus lancensis" is not a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex is incorrect. And based on their striking anatomical similarities, it is more parsimonious to assume that "Nanotyrannus lancensis" is the junior synonym of Tyrannosaurus rex and represents a juvenile stage of the taxon.
Author Comment
A former abstract version of this paper is available at http://figshare.com/articles/Evidence_points_out_that_Nanotyrannus_is_juvenile_Tyrannosaurus_rex/1313017.