North Carolina: New Dinosaur Discovery

siats-meekerorumIt seems like the T.Rex might be getting a run for its money.  Now that the Siats meekerorum has been discovered by paleontologists at North Carolina State University, this could mean the T. Rex will have to share some of the attention it has been getting for the last gazillion years.  It seems that this newly discovered dinosaur – measuring over 30 feet long and weighing over four tons – was  around 98 million years ago and is the first one like this to be discovered in North America.

Indeed, according to the head of the study, Lindsay Zanno (who is also Paleontology Director at North Carolina State University), “this dinosaur was a colossal predator second only to the great T. rex and perhaps Acrocanthosaurus in the North American fossil record.”  It was in 2008 Zanno first discovered bones connected to this dinosaur during an expedition to 11-million-year-old rocks in the Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah.

The reason this dinosaur has been named Siats meekerorum is in reference to a cannibalistic monster from the Ute Native American people mythology and the Meeker family, who supported early palaeontologists at The Field Museum.