Timurlengia Timurlengia

Timurlengia is an extinct genus of tyrannosauroid dinosaurs known from the early Late Cretaceous (Turonian age) Bissekty Formation of the Kyzylkum Desert in Uzbekistan. The genus contains a single species, Timurlengia euotica, named in 2016 based on a braincase and numerous single bones of many individuals.

Timurlengia is part of a grade of early-diverging tyrannosauroids preceding the later and larger tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus. As such, it helps elucidate the early evolution of the anatomy of these animals. In particular, it shows that these species developed their large heads and sophisticated hearing abilities before their large bodies, which only happened in the last 20 million years of the clade’s evolution. Timurlengia was likely a pursuit hunter that could hear low-frequency sounds based on the shape of its ear canal.