(Twitter / @TriSpinedLzrd)

According to a new study from the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, the beloved dino the Tyrannosaurus rex is actually three different dinosaurs, all under the "Tyrannosaurus" genus. The news has shocked many in the scientific community, as well as those outside it, where many have made the T. rex a household name — a schoolyard symbol of ancient, terrifying species.

Although the study is still considered contentious, the three paleontologists who have recently questioned the fossils, often located in notable museums on massive displays, have found that the bones in the arrangement do not line up. They believe that the fossils assigned to given T. rex clusters are actually three different body types, which they further consider to represent three separate Tyrannosaurus species. The two variants are called Tyrannosaurus regina and Tyrannosaurus imperator.

The news hit Twitter yesterday after notable publications like Reuters and National Geographic tweeted about the development. Their posts received thousands of likes in less than 24 hours, inspiring heated debates on the platform.

However, most people took the proposed truth light-heartedly, creating memes about the T. rex en masse using multiple different meme templates like Spider-Man Pointing At Spider-Man and They're The Same Picture, among others, all having to do with humorous portrayals of deception.

This new study, however, does not deem that the T. rex never existed. It merely demonstrates that it doesn't look like the Jurassic Park version everyone has in their heads. If you feel bad at all about this possible discovery, just remember to be glad that none of these species exist today.


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Comments 1 total

Cyrannus95

I've always heard the prevailing theory was that the different Tyrannosaurus skeleton types was just a T. rex at different stages in it's life (adult, subadult, juvenile, etc.). Now if these are full grown Rexes with different bone structures that would be interesting.

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