The Tyrannosaurus Rex has long held a place in our imagination as the king of the prehistoric jungle, but a new fossil finding in Utah may challenge this long-held belief.

It’s called the ‘Siats Meekerorum.’ The name ‘Siats’ refers to a man-eating monster in the mythology of the Ute Native Americans. Siats “was a colossal predator, second only to the great T-rex,” says Lindsay Zanno, director of Paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

It’s estimated that the scaly beast weighed more than 4 tons and was over 10 metres long – putting it up there with some of the very biggest dinosaurs.

Those imagining an epic battle to the death between a T-Rex and a Siats will be disappointed to discover that it wasn’t until Siats became extinct that the Tyrannosaurus family really started evolving and growing.

It’s been a full 60 years since scientists last made a discovery akin to this one, making this a significant find and one of the three largest-ever discovered in North America. The discovery of the Siats is even more groundbreaking because it helps piece together a 30-million-year gap in the fossil record of North American large.

“Siats is just the tip of the iceberg; our teams are unearthing a lost dinosaurian ecosystem right here in the badlands of western North America,” says Zanno.

[Source : The Verge]