New 'King of Gore' Dinosaur Discovered In Grand Staircase-Escalante

The new King of Gore dinosaur.

Another week, another new dinosaur species discovered in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. It's becoming a regular occurrence.

Grand Staircase has recently become one of Utah's best dinosaur spots. Other spots, like Dinosaur National Monument and Cleveland-Lloyd Query have been studied for so many years, it is rare for them to yield something totally new. But Grand Staircase came on paleontologists' radar just a few years ago. It's a huge area that will take decades to fully explore.

A new species was announced today at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The Deseret News has this article about the find. Below are excerpts.

Weighing in at more than 2 tons and at least 2 dozen feet long, a new species of dinosaur related to Tyrannosaurus Rex was fierce enough to be dubbed "King of Gore."

The discovery of "Lythronax argestes" at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah was announced Wednesday at the Natural History Museum of Utah and coincides with the publication of a study in PLOS ONE, an open access scientific journal.

Scientists say the discovery of Lythronax is particularly noteworthy because of what it reveals about the tyrannosaur family, which is a group of small- to large-bodied bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs. Previously, paleontologists believed this type of wide-skulled tyrannosaurid only appeared 70 million years ago, whereas Lythronax shows it had evolved at least 10 million years earlier.

Read the full article.