Imagine sitting down to dinner and ordering a drumstick the size of your body.
Your meal would need to be brought out on a forklift.
What did you just order, you may ask?
The king of all dinosaurs, the T-Rex.
But what would this dinosaur taste like?
It’s probably not what you imagine.
Tyrannosaurus Rex feared nothing because it was the ultimate predator.
It fed on anything that would satisfy its hunger.
This meant that the muscles in the legs, tail, and jaw of Tyrannosaurus were large and meaty.
The creature weighed somewhere between 11,000 to 15,500 pounds.
So your cut of T-Rex meat would be enough to feed an entire human family many times
over.
Now to be clear, despite what Ken Ham says humans and dinosaurs never lived at the same
time.
Dinosaurs likely went extinct due to an asteroid impact around 65 million years ago.
Humans on the other hand did not evolve until about 300,000 years ago, so there is absolutely
no overlap.
But scientists now have the technology to bring extinct species back to life using genetic
engineering.
There are still some things that need to be figured out before creating a viable dinosaur
embryo, but it most likely will be possible in your lifetime.
However, if you have seen the movie Jurassic Park the question isn’t when will we bring
back dinosaurs; but should we bring back dinosaurs?
This is an ethical question and one that scientists are currently grappling with as they get closer
and closer to bringing back extinct species.
Scientists at Yale and Harvard were recently able to change chicken embryos so that they
grew the snouts of velociraptors instead of beaks.
This may seem like science fiction, but it’s not, it’s reality.
So, if we were to bring back a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it didn’t break out of its cage
and eat us all, what would the meat actually taste like?
As with all animals that we eat, the cut of meat would be important.
When you picture a T-Rex your brain probably conjures an image of a reptilian monster with
sharp teeth, long tail, and really short arms.
However, Jurassic Park got it wrong.
We now know that many dinosaurs, including infant and perhaps full grown adult Tyrannosauruses,
actually had feathers.
This has been proven through examining the fossil record and understanding the evolution
of dinosaurs.
The very first thing you would need to do before you could eat a T-Rex would be to pluck
its feathers off to get at the body.
The most muscle, which is what you are eating when you eat meat, is found in the legs of
the T-Rex, so you would probably want to start by having a gigantic dino drumstick.
The short arms of the T-Rex means that there was probably not much breast meat on the animal.
This means it would probably be better to go for the legs, which would look like an
extremely large chicken leg.
The meat itself would probably look similar to the dark meat of poultry that we eat today.
But what would the T-Rex meat taste like?
Would it be delicious, gross, gamey?
The taste you have in your mind may be far from what the king of dinosaurs actually tasted
like.
There is one thing for sure, it would not taste like beef.
There are a few reasons for this, the main one being that dinosaurs were not mammals.
This means their muscles did not have the consistency of what we think of as “red
meat” today.
Therefore, no matter what cut, or type of dino you ate—including T-Rex—it would
not taste like beef.
It might taste like a different type of animal though.
All birds that live on Earth today are descendants of dinosaurs.
Now we aren’t saying that Tyrannosaurus Rex evolved into the pigeon sitting outside
your window right now.
But we are saying that the closest living relatives to dinosaurs are birds.
They most likely evolved from smaller dinosaurs like Archaeopteryx, and it took millions and
millions of years, but the birds of today without a doubt evolved from dinosaurs.
So, if you sank your teeth into a T-Rex drumstick would it taste like chicken?
Maybe, or it might taste like a different bird, one that happens to be the largest on
the planet today.
Some scientists have hypothesized that the meat of dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus
Rex, would in fact taste like chicken, or perhaps turkey.
Again, birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, and therefore, share more DNA with dinos than
any other species on the planet.
It is possible that eating the meat of a T-Rex would be like eating a giant chicken.
However, this is probably not entirely true.
If we really want to know what the meat of a dino like T-Rex tasted like, we should look
to one of the oldest known species of birds on the planet, the ostrich.
If you’ve never had ostrich it is actually pretty good.
It has a unique taste, but is also reminiscent of other poultry.
Since ostriches are one of the oldest living species of birds on the planet, they may have
meat that tastes more closely to dinos than a more recently evolved bird like chickens.
According to scientists ostriches probably evolved around 20 to 23 million years ago.
That is at least 40 million years after the last dinosaur went extinct.
That is a long time for things to change between the two species.
Therefore, ostriches may taste more like dinosaurs than other birds do, but in terms of tasting
exactly like a T-Rex, probably not.
There is one key factor that could help us determine what a Tyrannosaurus Rex actually
tasted like, and it is the reason the predator haunts your dreams.
Many scientists believe T-Rex had feathers, but don’t think of it as an oversized peacock.
The creature was still a behemoth with massive teeth and legs powerful enough to chase you
down with ease.
Plus, the feathers probably looked badass on a T-Rex.
There is no denying that the Tyrannosaurus was a hunter; and this would have affected
the taste of its meat.
Chickens, turkeys, and ostriches are not birds of prey.
Therefore, the meat on their bones is less sinewy and gamy.
The same cannot be said about Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The dinosaur needed to hunt to eat, and therefore, its muscles were more likely used in a way
that would make them taste like those of other predatory birds such as hawks and eagles.
Instead of a constant gradual movement, hunters tend to go from very little motion to fast
movement extremely quickly.
This causes muscles and tendons to become more tough and leathery.
Not only do the way muscles are used affect how meat tastes, but the food that T-Rex ate
would affect this as well.
There is a reason that most of the meat we eat as humans comes from herbivores and omnivores.
Carnivores tend to have a stronger, gamier taste to their meat.
So Tyrannosaurus Rex could have tasted more like a hawk than a chicken.
So you may be wondering what hawk tastes like.
Nobody on the Infographics Staff has ever eaten a hawk- though our Challenge Guy wasn’t
around to confirm this before the script got approved, and who knows what he’s eaten?-
but a hawk probably consists of mostly dark meat, and would be much gamier than even a
wild turkey.
But maybe T-Rex wouldn’t be that bad.
In fact, with a little barbecue sauce it might even be delicious.
There is one other factor that should be taken into consideration when determining how a
T-Rex would taste.
There aren’t very many species around today that were alive during the time of the dinosaurs,
but one that may hold clues as to what T-Rex actually tasted like still lurks in swamps
around our planet.
When you think of scary large toothed reptiles that live today, a crocodile or alligator
is probably the first creature you think of.
And although crocodiles are not dinosaurs, and did not evolve from dinosaurs, they are
both reptiles.
This may mean that their meat could share a similar taste.
Dinosaurs were reptiles.
So could T-Rex taste like a feathered alligator or crocodile?
Some scientists believe this might be the case.
Crocodiles and alligators share a common ancestor with dinosaurs in the very distant past.
But what do these creatures taste like?
Well if you’ve ever spent a significant time in Florida you may have come across alligator
on a restaurant menu.
It is oftentimes fried, but it kind of tastes like spicy chicken.
Crocodile on the other hand is reported to taste a little like pork chop.
So, which one of these reptiles would T-Rex taste more like?
It’s hard to say, but the fact that both alligators and crocodiles spend most of their
time in the water, and T-Rex did not, may suggest that neither one of these creatures
is an exact match to what the meat of a Tyrannosaurus Rex would taste like.
What conclusion can we come to based on all of the evidence?
There is an answer to this question, and it has to do with the DNA of chickens.
In 2007 a study was conducted using several protein sequences from a T-Rex fossil.
Scientists compared the sequences to other species in order to determine which one was
most closely related to the Tyrannosaurus.
Surprisingly, the protein sequences most closely resembling the T-Rex’s were found in chickens.
This is crazy because if the proteins produced by T-Rex were similar to those produced by
chickens, it is reasonable to assume that the meat could taste similar.
But what it comes down to is that Tyrannosaurus Rex meat probably tasted like a combination
of meat.
It may have tasted a little like a gamey chicken with a little bit of crocodile mixed in.
The meat would have been dark, like the drumsticks of a turkey.
Due to its hunting lifestyle, and the tensions put on the muscles, the meat would probably
be a little bit leathery and tough as well.
That being said, scientists also have a warning for those adventurous enough to try T-Rex
meat.
The meat itself might not taste very good at all.
In some T-Rex fossils jaw bone abnormalities have been found, suggesting that T-Rexes may
have been eating meat that had gone bad.
It is not out of the realm of possibility that the king of the dinosaurs was full of
parasites.
If this is true, then obviously Tyrannosaurus Rex meat may be something to steer clear of.
Some scientists suggest that if you were going to eat dino meat T-Rex probably wouldn’t
be the way to go.
Instead you’d probably want to sink your teeth into one of the herbivore species of
dinos.
A favorite of scientists seems to be Ornithomimosauria.
This was an ostrich-like dinosaur that grazed on plants and was very rarely sprinting or
moving quickly, which would keep the muscle from becoming too gamey.
Also, around 80 percent of the Ornithomimosauria’s body was hindquarters, meaning there would
be plenty of meat to go around.
If given the option, this would be the dinosaur of choice to eat.
If you want to approximate what Tyrannosaurus Rex meat tasted like it might be worth taking
a little bit of chicken, a sliver of crocodile, a piece of alligator, and a slice of ostrich,
putting them all together, and taking a bite.
This concoction may be the closest thing to T-Rex meat you will ever eat; that is until
scientists bring one back from the dead.
Now watch “Lion vs T Rex - Who Would Win?”
Or check out “Why Spinosaurus Was The Greatest Predator Ever.”