81 million year old teeth of dinosaur found in Nagasaki

Two fossilised teeth of a carnivorous dinosaur existing in Japan have been found from 81 million years old layer of earth in Nagasaki, researchers said today.
The teeth, estimated to be 10 metres long are the first fossils of a dinosaur belonging to the Tyrannosauridae family found in Japan, Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum officials said.
"Other fossils have been found in Nagasaki as well, leading us to reaffirm that various dinosaurs existed there," said Kazunori Miyata, Chief Researcher at the museum.
The fossils were unearthed in May 2014 from the same area but whether they belong to the same individual remains unclear, the museum added.

While one of the teeth is chipped and deformed, the other one is in a better condition with length and breadth of 8.2 centimetres and 2.7 cm respectively and is likely a tooth on the left side of the lower jaw.
The deformed tooth could have been larger than the other in its original state, research officials from the museum said.

The fossils will be on display at the Nagasaki Science Museum and while their replicas will be displayed at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum from Friday, Kyodo News agency reported.
Tyrannosauridae dinosaurs are known to have existed in North America and Asia in late Cretaceous period (83 million to 66 million years ago), with their body size ranging from 5 meters long to over 10 meters long.

Makoto Manabe, the lead researcher of biotic evolution at the National Museum of Nature and Science, says that the latest discovery will provide rare data helping to classify and estimate the sizes of dinosaurs owing to the less number of fossils of large carnivorous dinosaurs in Asia in comparison to North America.