The identity of a species of dinosaur may be facing extinction.
The Tyrannosaurus rex is not a singular species but made up of three species — the king in the genus, Tyrannosaurus; the bulkier and older emperor, T. imperator; and the slimmer queen, T. regina — according to a March research paper by a trio of scientists. Another team of paleontologists published the first peer-reviewed counterattack on Monday, according to the New York Times.
“The evidence was not convincing and had to be responded to because T. rex research goes well beyond science and into the public sphere,” said Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Wisconsin and an author of the new rebuttal. “It would have been unreasonable to leave the public thinking that the multiple species hypothesis was fact.”
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The initial study focused on the bulkiness of Tyrannosaurus femurs and the existence of two sets of incisor teeth poking out of the dinosaur’s lower jaw. Carr claimed in his rebuttal that neither trait is distinct to any of the purported Tyrannosaurus species and that “the features that were claimed to be different between the three species were actually overlapping.”
The original team has been anticipating a rebuttal from the paleontology community, and Gregory Paul, one of the team members, is working on another paper. Paul compared the refusal to acknowledge multiple T. rex species to “flat-earthism” and said his team’s evidence “indicates very strongly that there are multiple species.”
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The T. rex received its name in 1905. It is not the first dinosaur to undergo an identity crisis, as the triceratops experienced its own species split in 1996, when scientists split the three-horned herbivore into two species.
