FROM FOSSIL TO FAME
From Fossil to Fame
A dino-sized discovery
By Hampton Williams Hofer
Step into the SECU DinoLab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, and you may find yourself shoulder-to-shoulder with a paleontologist dusting off a specimen or examining a slide with a microscope. This high-tech research laboratory is open to the public, a chance for regular folks to see real science in action. And it’s home to a pair of very famous residents: the “Dueling Dinosaurs.”
The Dueling Dinosaurs — thought to be the remains of an intact tyrannosaur and Triceratops that died 67 million years ago — are considered perhaps the most significant fossils ever recovered from Montana’s storied Hell Creek Formation. For one, the specimens were nearly complete and exceptionally well-preserved. For another, these two dinosaurs had interacted, likely even died fighting, as evidenced by teeth fragments embedded in the Triceratops. They were first unearthed in 2006 by Clayton Phillips, a Montana rancher and self-styled dinosaur cowboy, who excavated and stored the specimens while spreading word of his discovery.
By 2016, Dr. Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, had heard of the fossils. She and her team traveled to New York, where the Dueling Dinosaurs were being stored, to verify the legitimacy of the fossils, then on to Montana to examine the conditions of the landscape where they were excavated.
Convinced of their importance, Zanno, along with the Friends of the NCMNS, worked to raise the funds to not only bring the Dueling Dinosaurs to North Carolina, but to build them a new home worthy of what she knew would be one of the most significant paleontological finds of the century. The NCMNS acquired the dinosaurs in 2020 — and got to work.
The museum built a new annex to support the Dueling Dinosaurs’ 31,000 pounds of bone, sediment and plaster. Unlike the way fossils have been treated in the past, the Dueling Dinosaurs would not be fully excavated and reassembled but remain within their plaster preparations — all the better to learn clues about how they behaved and appeared. (In the stone surrounding the Triceratops, for example, are impressions left by octagonal formations on its frill, offering insights into how the dinosaur’s skin may have looked and felt.)
While paleontologists had historically spent their research work dusting bones in dark museum basements, their work at the NCMNS would literally be brought to light. Visitors can see them, even talk to them, ask questions and observe their work in real time. The SECU DinoLab at the NCMNS, which opened in spring 2024, revolutionized the visitor experience with this groundbreaking exhibition.
The remarkably preserved fossils and whatever Cretaceous secrets they held were, as Zanno said at the time, like “a big, unopened Christmas present.” Now, less than two years since the museum welcomed the Dueling Dinosaurs, the first gift has been unwrapped. And it’s a whole new species, flipping decades of Tyrannosaurus rex research on its head.
The small tyrannosaur was believed to have been a teenage T. rex for the 20 years since Phillips spotted its pelvis weathering out of the ground. Using CT scans and imaging to look inside the blocks of earth housing the fossils, paleontologists at the NCMNS uncovered characteristics in their tyrannosaur specimen that set it apart from a T. rex, including larger forelimbs, more teeth, fewer tail vertebrae, and distinct nerve patterns. In addition, growth rings and spinal fusion data proved that the specimen was an adult. But at 18 feet long and 1,500 pounds, it is only around a tenth of the body mass and half the length of a full-grown T. rex.
That meant that the small tyrannosaur is, in fact, a mature Nanotyrannus lancensis.
“The implications are difficult to overstate,” says Zanno. “The fact is, much of our current understanding of T. rex was built on three decades of research that unknowingly mixed data from Nanotyrannus with that of Tyrannosaurus — two different tyrannosaurs that aren’t even closely related. Most of that research now needs a second look.”
Along with co-author Dr. James Napoli, a vertebrate paleontologist at Stony Brook University, Zanno published the findings of their study in Nature this past October.
The scientific gift of the Dueling Dinosaurs exhibit will continue to give, as Nanotyrannus changes much of what paleontologists have believed about history’s most famous dinosaur and the world in which it reigned supreme. A longstanding debate in the realm of paleontology questioned whether Nanotyrannus was a distinct species or simply an adolescent T. rex. Zanno and Napoli showed that the Nanotyrannus at the NCMNS is biologically incompatible with a T. rex — meaning that the T. rex’s dominance in the final million years leading up to the asteroid was not unchallenged.
“To me, what’s exciting about this discovery is that it opens the door to a whole new series of questions about how these drastically different predators — one built for brute strength and one built for speed — interacted in the twilight of the dinosaurs. What we can say right now is that life at the end of the Cretaceous was a lot more colorful than we had imagined,” says Zanno.
Though smaller than T. rex, Nanotyrannus was still a valiant competitor, and a quicker, more agile hunter. Its existence proves that predator diversity at the end of the age of the dinosaurs was richer than previous research suggests. Now a new question arises: How many other mistakenly identified dinosaur species could be hiding in plain sight?
“Scientists have long debated whether dinosaurs were thriving or diminishing when the asteroid struck,” Zanno says. “Without understanding the number of dinosaurs alive at the time and the ecological roles they filled, we cannot document how mass extinction events have shaped life on our planet in the past, nor how they are likely to affect us in the future.”
Zanno and Napoli conducted exhaustive research before releasing their findings in Nature, work supported by the State of North Carolina, N.C. State University, the Friends of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the Dueling Dinosaurs Capital Campaign. Their process included examining more than 200 other tyrannosaur fossils. One of those, like the specimen at the museum, was originally believed to be a teenage T. rex, but also ended up being a fully-grown Nanotyrannus.
Interestingly, this specimen differed enough from Nanotyrannus lancensis at the museum for them to conclude it was, in fact, a new species entirely. (Zanno and Napoli named it Nanotyrannus lethaeus after the underworld River Nethe in Greek mythology, where souls who drank the water forgot their past lives and were ready to be reborn.)
“Nanotyrannus was clearly an animal capable of speed, darting about on long limbs, unlike its bulkier cousin, T. rex. It also had powerful, dextrous arms, large hands, a shorter tail, and unserrated peg-like teeth at the front of the mouth — oddly, not that dissimilar from yours and mine,” says Zanno. “But how fast could it run? How did it hunt? What was its favorite prey? I am excited to dive into Nanotyrannus itself. We know next to nothing about its biology; in a very real way, this is a dinosaur being reborn to the scientific community.”
The specimens at the NCMNS have affectionately been named after two North Carolina locations. Murphy, the Triceratops, is named for the westernmost town in the state, signifying the strength and longevity of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Manteo, the Nanotyrannus, is named for the coastal town on Roanoke Island, home to The Lost Colony and the original American mystery. It suits the Nanotyrannus, a name that now represents question, discovery and the spirit of exploration.
Zanno says this is just the beginning. “We have decades of incredible research in the pipeline on the Dueling Dinosaurs. This is all made possible not just by the outstanding preservation of the fossil carcasses and the talent and dedication of the team we have put together, but also by the community backing we have received,” he says, adding, “The people of North Carolina and beyond banded together to protect these fossils for science and the public alike — a powerful force for good that will continue to pay dividends.
“We simply can’t wait to keep sharing the excitement with all.”