By: Leo Chen

Recently, a new meat-eating species with similar features of the world-famous T-rex has been discovered by paleontologists.

The findings of this new beast, including how it has small forelimbs and a gigantic skull, is listed in the journal, Current Biology. In the book, researchers say that tiny arms may not be a bug in the evolution that gives dinosaurs a disadvantage in hunting, but instead, it may have given the predators survival advantages.

Meraxes gigas was named after a dragon in the Game of Thrones book series. The dinosaur was dug out over the course of four years after its skull was found from an expedition located in the northern Patagonia region in Argentina in 2012. The skeleton was discovered to be well preserved. The length of the head is about 1.27m, and the entire dinosaur is around 11m long and 4 tons. Despite its huge body, its arms were as small as 61cm long, that’s about half the size of its skull and it could not have been able to touch its mouth.

Even though Tyrannosaurus ex and Meraxes gigas share similar lengths for their arms and skull, it’s said that T-rex did not get its tiny arms from Meraxes gigas who lived far before T-rex stomped the earth. They also are far apart from each other in the evolution family tree.