T. Rex and Mini-me

It was strong. It was fast. Its ferocious teeth were made to tear flesh. It lived 125 million years ago -- and was among the most terrifying carnivores of its time.

If you guessed that the critter in question was Tyrannosaurus rex, guess again. This mini-me version of the 5-ton T. rex weighed only 145 pounds and stood just 9 feet tall.

The newly discovered dinosaur skeleton, unearthed in China, goes by the name Raptorex kriegsteini.  One hundred times smaller than the T. rex, its discovery came as a surprise to researchers at the University of Chicago.

Beyond adding to our general knowledge of prehistoric life, Raptorex is already changing scientists' understanding of dinosaur evolution. Up until now, it was assumed that T. rex's tiny forearms evolved in conjunction with its huge body. With the discovery of Raptorex, this assumption has evaporated.

Says researcher Stephen Brusatte on the CNN News site: "We can say that these features did not evolve as a consequence of large body size but rather evolved as an efficient set of predatory weapons in an animal that was 1/100th the size of Tyrannosaurus rex and that lived 60 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex."

Raptorex may be just the tip of the iceberg for paleontologists as they strive to re-create the evolutionary process that created life as we know it today. What "missing link" connects tiny Raptorex with the massive T. rex? What caused the huge increase in size that we connect with most dinosaur and even mammal fossils of later periods?

The only thing we know for sure is that we have a great deal more to learn.

Image courtesy of stock.xchng