The tyrannosaurids of the late Late Cretaceous were in a unique position. While earlier theropods had spread freely across the continents, tyrannosaurs lived in a world of fragmented continents and inland seaways. In Asia and western North America, where they were restricted, rising mountains and ebbing seaways formed a huge diversity of habitats, inhabited by a huge diversity of hadrosaurs and ceratopsians. For the first time in theropod history, there were not only no other giant apex predators, but the next biggest carnivorous dinosaurs - dromaeosaurs and troodontids - were over an order of magnitude smaller than they were (Holtz). This meant they were free to not only inherit the role of big-game hunters but, throughout their ontogeny, to maintain their ancestral roles as mid-sized, long-legged pursuers of small, fast animals.