Tyrannosaur with a very long nose has been nicknamed “Pinocchio rex”

London: A new type of Tyrannosaur with a very long nose has been nicknamed “Pinocchio rex”, the BBC reported. The ferocious carnivore, nine metres long with a distinctive horny snout, was a cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex, the report said.

Its skeleton was dug up in a Chinese construction site and identified by scientists at Edinburgh University, UK. The 66-million-year-old predator, officially named Qianzhousaurus sinensis, is described in Nature Communications. “Pinocchio” looked very different to other tyrannosaurs, the journal said.

“It had the familiar toothy grin of T. rex, but its snout was long and slender, with a row of horns on top,” Edinburgh’s Dr Steve Brusatte was quoted as saying by the BBC.

It might have looked a little comical, but it would have been as deadly as any other tyrannosaur, and maybe even a little faster and stealthier, the report said.