The dinosaur's skull. Photo / Steve Brusatte, Junchang Lu.
"What sets it apart from T-Rex is that it has this long snout, this really long lightly built skull, and T-Rex is quite different -- it has a very deep, robust, long skull," Dr Brusatte said.
"We thought the name was a cheeky way to set it apart from the others."
The nearly complete skeleton of Pinocchio Rex was discovered by construction workers in Ganzhou in southern China in 2010, he said.
"It was a one-in-a-million specimen. was just blown away, the skeleton was so complete and so well preserved."
Dr Brusatte was called in by colleagues to help describe and research the newest member of the tyrannosaur family, and a research paper outlining the discovery, which he contributed to, was published earlier this year.
When he is not travelling the world uncovering new fossils, Dr Brusatte works as a teacher at the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
"For a month or two every year I am out with colleagues in different parts of the world trying to find new dinosaurs, and things that no one has ever seen before."
He said the feeling of uncovering a new fossil is "indescribable".
"Your heart kind of races ... You get down and start digging it up. The mystery deepens the more you uncover, it really becomes a detective story."
Dr Brusatte will discuss Pinocchio Rex, along with some of the other newer species of tyrannosaurs and the tyrannosaur family tree, at his talk.
"Everyone knows T-Rex and that it was the king of the dinosaurs and at the top of the food chain, but that is something that only came right at the end of the age of dinosaurs.
"There was a long process of evolution that culminated in the big bruising predators like T-Rex and that is the story the exhibit tells."
Dr Brusatte's talk, titled Tyrannosaur Discoveries, will start at 7pm at Te Papa. The exhibition runs until February 8.
Dr Stephen Brusatte, the palaeontologist who heloped discover Pinocchio Rex.
Pinocchio Rex facts:
- Pinocchio Rex is the newest tyrannosaur to be discovered.
- They were a very close cousin to T-Rex
- They were 8-9 metres long, and 2 metres tall from the hip
- Pinocchio Rex weighed around one tonne
- They lived in Asia and were easily distinguished by their long snout and lightly built skull
