Complete T. Rex Skeleton Found With Another, Smaller T. Rex Skeleton Inside It

A remarkably complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton excavated from the Judith River Formation in Montana has yielded a startling secondary discovery: a second, smaller T. rex skeleton lodged within the rib cage of the first, in what paleontologists are calling 'either a landmark predation event or the most disturbing matryoshka doll in natural history.' The outer specimen, estimated at approximately 12 meters in length, contains within its thoracic cavity the partially digested remains of a juvenile T. rex roughly 4 meters long. 'The inner tyrannosaur is remarkably well-preserved, which suggests it was consumed shortly before the outer animal died,' said Dr. Ruth Stratigraphy of the Field Museum. 'We're essentially looking at a 68-million-year-old doggy bag that never got finished.' The discovery has reignited debate about T. rex cannibalism, a behavior previously inferred only from isolated tooth marks on tyrannosaur bones. 'This is the first direct physical evidence that T. rex ate its own kind,' Dr. Stratigraphy said. 'And apparently it ate them whole, which raises deeply unsettling questions about mealtimes in the Late Cretaceous.' Graduate student Marcus Fossil, who first noticed the anomaly during CT scanning, described the initial reaction in the lab. 'I said, "There's a dinosaur inside the dinosaur," and everyone thought the scanner was broken. It took four hours and three recalibrations before we accepted that no, the data was correct, this was just horrifying.' The specimen has been nicknamed 'Turducken Rex' by the excavation team, a designation the museum's communications department has asked them to stop using in formal publications.