Teenage T. rexes bested smaller rivals
Prehistoric heavyweights such as the Tyrannosaurus rex might have outcompeted their smaller rivals while in their teens, leaving medium-sized dinosaurs missing from the fossil record, researchers from the University of New Mexico and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln believe.
Palaeontologists have long been puzzled as to why suggests this may be because the smaller species were outcompeted by adolescent megatheropods (big, bipedal, carnivorous dinosaurs) that were not yet fully grown.
