Earlier this year, a paper suggesting the iconic T. rex was actually three separate species was met with criticism from the paleontology community. The study, led by independent researcher and paleoartist Gregory Paul, proposed adding two new T. rex relatives: the T. regina and the T. imperator.
“I’m aware that there could be a lot of people who aren’t going to be happy about this,” Paul told the New York Times’ Asher Elbein in March. “And my response to them is: Publish a refutation.”
Paleontologists took Paul’s advice and published a rebuttal this week in the journal Evolutionary Biology.
“The evidence was not convincing and had to be responded to because T. rex research goes well beyond science and into the public sphere,” Thomas Carr, a paleontologist at Carthage College in Wisconsin and an author of the new study, tells the New York Times’ Jack Tamisiea. “It would have been unreasonable to leave the public thinking that the multiple species hypothesis was fact.”
Fossil