Godzilla's grandfather stalked prehistoric HK
Jurassic Park, move over. The discovery that south Asia was the stomping ground of the grand-daddy of the feared Tyrannosaurus Rex suggests the world's most famous dinosaur could have spent some of its evolutionary years in Hong Kong.
But the earliest tyrannosaur would have had little trouble negotiating its way around the territory since 130 million years ago even Legco did not exist.
T-Rex, the 12-metre top dinosaur meat-eater and beloved predator of B-movie actors, is known to have lived only in North America and Asia, particularly China and Mongolia, between 65 million and 85 million years ago, said dinosaur-hunter Eric Buffetaut of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris.
But when his colleague Varavudh Suteethern of the Thai Geological Survey stumbled across part of a fossilised tyrannosaur skeleton in northern Thailand, the two researchers found it half T-Rex's size but about 30 million years older.
The team publishes its findings today in Nature magazine.
'It's both the oldest tyrannosaur, and the most primitive, so it gives us the idea that they originated there, then moved to North America later,' said Mr Buffetaut yesterday.
Although the team could not find the skull, he said, it probably had huge teeth and claws similar to T-Rex, and walked horizontally on its back legs, using its long tail for balance.
The researchers named the animal Siamotyrannus isanensis, after Siam for Thailand, the Greek tyrannos for tyrant, and isan, the local name for the area where it was found.
Thailand and southern China formed a peninsula of the huge Asian continent then, meaning the animals would have roamed the whole area.
'We don't have the right kind of rock in Hong Kong to find fossils,' Mr Buffetaut said.
'But we've seen teeth from Guangxi that are extremely similar to what we have found in Thailand. We would be very interested in going there and trying to find more.'
