This image shows two individuals of Qianzhousaurus sinensis and a small feathered dinosaur called Nankangia. Image credit: Chuang Zhao.

Paleontologists have made an exciting discovery near the city of Ganzhou, in southern China – the near complete fossil remains of a skull in a site that dates back to the Cretaceous period. The skull belongs to a dinosaur that has been scientifically designated Qianzhousaurus sinensis, a long-snouted species that belongs to the same species of Tyrannosaurus rex (Tyrannosauridae) that would have lived in Asia some 66 and 72 million years ago.

Nicknamed “Pinocchio rex” by researchers, this creature would have measured about 9 m from snout to tail, had an elongated skull and had long teeth compared with the deeper, more powerful jaws and thick teeth of a conventional Tyrannosaurus. From all of this, they have theorised that although sinensis lived alongside rex during the…