Nanuqsaurus hoglundi was the big little dinosaur find that nearly got left behind.
Classified in a March study, the hobbit T. rex, barely two-thirds the size of its more famous relative, roamed the Arctic some 70 million years ago. It’s the only tyrannosaur ever found outside temperate latitudes, rewriting our understanding of the animals’ diversity.
“I recall just hoping I’d remember to put those rocks on the helicopter,” says Anthony Fiorillo, curator of Earth sciences at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.
In 2006, Fiorillo’s team was above the Arctic Circle, on Alaska’s North Slope. The polar season for fieldwork is brief, and they were busy excavating horned dinosaurs. But they also noticed a few interesting-looking, basketball-size rocks lying around the site. Fiorillo set them aside, thinking he would take them if the helicopter had room. It did.
Paleontologist Ron Tykoski looked at the rocks when they ...
