photo by: University of Kansas

The University of Kansas excavation team is shown at the Hell Creek Formation site in Montana recently.

A team of paleontologists from the University of Kansas is hoping for one last big fossil find from a small — relatively speaking — dinosaur.

Yes, the dinosaur that the KU group is hoping to find fossil remains of would have measured about 25 feet long and featured a three-foot long head full of teeth. But it was far from full grown, and it is far from common in the world of paleontology. It is a juvenile tyrannosaur — T. Rex — and it is one of only a “handful” that have ever been discovered, KU said in a press release.

A team led by David Burnham, preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, first uncovered the young tyrannosaur in 2016 in a part the Montana badlands known as the Hell Creek Formation.

Burnham and KU students have returned to the site in past years, but now they are doing what is expected to be one final dig at the location to ensure that they are leaving none of the valuable fossils behind.

photo by: David Burnham/University of Kansas

Members of the KU excavation team sort through layers of the soil at the Montana site.

The team, which includes students and volunteers, currently is in Montana for a four-week stay to scour the site once more. The team is particularly on the lookout for tyrannosaur teeth. The KU find has been touted as one of the world’s best examples of teeth from a young tyrannosaur dinosaur.

Researchers believe those teeth can help fill in blanks about how young tyrannosaurs developed, and even some of the challenges they faced to survive in a hostile world.

“The young tyrannosaur probably had not yet reached its teen years and did not have the same powerful bite as an adult,” Burnham said in a KU release. “The KU specimen provides ample evidence indicating the hard life young tyrants endured growing up under the shadow of adult T. rex was difficult and may have required help from cohorts while hunting.”

The young tyrannosaur has “less robust, more blade-like teeth than an adult,” which has researchers speculating that juvenile tyrannosaurs may have had a significantly different diet and feeding routine than that of a full-grown T-Rex.

While it is hard to imagine a 25-foot dinosaur not even being a teenager, it is believed a full-grown T. Rex was often 40-feet in length and weighed more than 12,000 pounds.

photo by: David Burnham/University of Kansas

Sara Meyers, KU undergraduate student, points to a tyrannosaur tooth she found on the first day of the excavation in Montana.

In total, there have only been about 100 T.Rex fossil finds, and the large majority of those have been from adult tyrannosaurs. The KU find is giving Burnham and his team a chance to do significant new research on the species and how it developed. The KU team plans to publish its findings about the tyrannosaur later this year, “hopefully unraveling its enigmatic evolutionary relationships,” KU said in a press release.

— The University of Kansas News Service contributed to this report.

photo by: David Burnham/University of Kansas

A tooth discovered at the Montana dinosaur dig site is shown.