Hairy Museum of Natural History

A lovely little critter from the base of the tyrannosaur family tree has just been described. Guanlong wucaii, “the crowned dragon from the five-coloured rocks,” was discovered in Late Jurassic strata in China’s Junggar Basin. At 160,000,000 years old, it is a good 90 million years older than T. rex and about 40 million years older than the next-oldest tyrannosaurs, Dilong paradoxus from China and Eotyrannus lengi from England.

But perhaps the most unusual feature of this new tyrannosaur is its snout. All tyrannosaurs have some form of decoration on top of their noses, although they typically limit their ornamentation to a tasteful roughened texture or small row of hornlets. Guanlong, on the other hand, flaunted its family’s conventions and sported a spectacular crest, “thin as a tortilla” and riddled with holes. It is, proportionally, the largest cranial ornament known from any non-avian theropod, and it would not have looked out of place on a tapejarid pterosaur.

With a feature like that, how could I not break out the sketchbook?

The spectacularly-crowned Guanlong wucaii

Today’s Nature has the paper, which requires a subscription to read in full, but as always the most important parts are freely available. An online news story is also available for free.

National Geographic has the story, along with a beautiful restoration by Zhongda Zhang.

ScienceBloggers Afarensis and Pharyngula have it covered.

And Carl Zimmer fits Guanlong into the bigger picture over at The Loom.

Thanks to all the folks who alerted me to the story!

—Matt Celeskey.

File under: Dinosaurs, Jurassic, Recent Discoveries.