Three children with a passion for fossils left their classmates stunned when they discovered the fossilized bone of a young man Tyrannosaurus Rex at North Dakota.

Scientists and filmmakers announced at a press conference yesterday, Tuesday, the rare discovery made by three boys in July 2022 in Hell Creek, an area known to dinosaur hunters in the northern part of the USA.

Two brothers aged 10 and 7 and their 9-year-old cousin were looking for fossils when they came across an imposing fossilized bone.

They took a picture and sent it to a family friend who happened to be a curator specializing in vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Natural History and Science, Dr. Tyler Lyson.

At first the children thought they were dealing with a relatively more common species of duck-billed dinosaur. However, during the search of the area, Dr. Lyson and his team of experts and volunteers – among the latter were the three who made the discovery – found that it was the bone of an adolescent Tyrannosaurus that had died about 67 million years ago.

“Juvenile T-Rex specimens are extremely rare,” Dr. Lyson points out in a press release. “This discovery is important for researchers as this specimen could provide answers to the development of the king of the dinosaurs,” he notes.

The tibia found is 82 cm long, while the tibia of an adult T-Rex reaches an average of 112 cm, indicating that this T-Rex was between 13 and 15 years old when it died. It apparently weighed 1.6 tons, was 7.6 meters long and 3 meters high.

“It’s remarkable how T-Rex went from the size of a kitten to the 12-meter, 3.6-ton adult predator we know,” Thomas Holtz, a University of Maryland paleontologist and recognized authority, said in the release. in the field of T-Rex.

A documentary made by Giant Screen Films about this discovery will be shown in about 100 cinemas worldwide on June 21.

“It’s the kind of story that documentary filmmakers dream of making,” emphasized the film’s co-creator David Clarke.