T. rex may have been a cannibal, says study

Palaeontologists have found evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex, the largest and most dreaded dinosaur that roamed North America 66 million years ago, might have been a cannibal which sometimes devoured its own species.

The scientists, who based their study on the bite marks on the carnivores’ bones, believe the marks were made by other T. rexes.

The marks suggest that the giants were killed and then eaten out by victorious T. rexes, the researchers reported in the journal PLoS ONE.While searching through dinosaur fossil collections for another study on dinosaur bones with mammal tooth marks, Nick Longrich, a researcher from Yale University, discovered a bone with especially large gouges in them.Given the age and location of the fossil, the marks had to be made by T. rex, Mr. Longrich said. “They’re the kind of marks that any big carnivore could have made, but T. rex was the only big carnivore in western North America 65 million years ago,” Mr. Longrich said.It was only after discovering the bite marks were from a T. rex that Mr. Longrich realised the bone itself also belonged to the behemoth.

After searching through a few dozen T. rex bones from several different museum fossil collections, he discovered a total of three foot bones (including two toes) and one arm bone that showed evidence of T. rex cannibalism, representing a significant percentage.

“It’s surprising how frequent it appears to have been,” Mr. Longrich said. “We’re not exactly sure what that means.”

The marks are definitely the result of feeding. If two T. rex fought to the death, the victor might have made a meal out of his adversary, said Mr. Longrich.He said: “Modern big carnivores do this all the time. It’s a convenient way to take out the competition and get a bit of food at the same time.”

However, the marks appear to have been made some time after death, Mr. Longrich said, meaning that if one dinosaur killed another, it might have eaten most of the meat off the more accessible parts of the carcass before returning to pick at the smaller foot and arm bones.While only one other dinosaur species, Majungatholus, is known to have been a cannibal, Mr. Longrich said the practice was likely more common than we think and a closer examination of fossil bones could turn up more evidence that other species also preyed on one another.The finding is a big clue into the obscure eating habits of these enormous predators. While today’s large carnivores often hunt together in packs, T. rex likely acted on their own, Mr. Longrich said.

“These animals were some of the largest terrestrial carnivores of all time. There’s a big mystery around what and how they ate, and this research helps to uncover one piece of the puzzle.”

Facebook, Bing teams up to give online search a social touch

Bangalore: Facebook users using Bing will see their friends' like popping up when they run their Bing searches while logged into their Facebook account. In addition, while searching for friends in Bing, they will have people with common Facebook friends topping the search result.

The move is a result of Microsoft's decision of adding input from users' Facebook data to the results the Bing search pulls up. According to a Facebook spokesperson, the service is already available to two percent of Facebook users in the U.S. and it will be available to the rest in coming weeks. Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Online Services Division, said that search has become more personalized and social today. Hence, while searching a user must also look at the connections between people. The process of connecting to information can be more personal and useful by using a social layer, said Nadella.

There will be two new features in Bing - 'Liked Results' and 'Facebook Profile Search'. 'Liked Results' will show what the user's friends like when he/she launches an online search while in Facebook. On the other hand, 'Facebook Profile Search' narrows down the search by listing people who share mutual Facebook friends with the searcher at the top of the results.Both Microsoft and Facebook are saying that that they'll safeguard users' privacy as it is the most important priority. In its 'Instant Personalization' project, Facebook has teamed up with several partners apart from Bing including Rotten Tomatoes, Docs.com, Pandora, Yelp and Scribd. All of them are bound to follow Facebook's guidelines and can only use subscribers' public information.

As per Facebook's terms and conditions, a user should be 13 years of age to access its services, while Bing's Facebook Profile Search can be used by those users who list themselves as 18 years or older in their Facebook profiles.