Top 10 Fascinating Facts About T-Rex
10. We haven’t yet found a complete tyrannosaurus rex skeleton
Owing to their position as an apex predator at the very top of the food chain, there aren’t
all that many T. rex fossils out there to find. So far, about fifty skeletons have been
discovered and none of these are entirely complete. Amongst the most impressive is a
T. rex called Sue, named after the woman who found the bones on federally owned land in
South Dakota. In her prime, Sue would have stood more than 13 feet tall and weighed in
at something in the region of 9 tons. She was also the subject of a lengthy and complicated
legal battle as described in the 2014 documentary “Dinosaur 13.”
The first person who does manage to lay claim to a complete tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is
likely to become very wealthy indeed. Sue, despite only being 85% complete, sold at auction
for $8 million. Another significant find of an almost complete tyrannosaur, discovered
along with a triceratops, attracted bids of $5.5 million but didn’t sell, as even that
failed to meet the reserve price.
9. Hunter or scavenger?
don’t know about tyrannosaurus rex. One of the biggest areas of contention through
the years has been whether it was a hunter or scavenger.
In 2007, the discovery of a remarkable fossil may have finally settled the question once
and for all. The fossil was of a hadrosaur, a large plant eating dinosaur, which was found
to have a T. rex tooth embedded in its spine. The bone had grown back around the tooth,
indicating that the animal must have been alive when a T. rex took a lump out of it
but had been lucky enough to survive the attack.
Whether the T. rex hunted or scavenged for its food most likely isn’t an either/or
question. Like modern day lions and tigers, the tyrant lizard king probably wasn’t above
scavenging should the opportunity of a free meal present itself.
8. T. rex may have had the most powerful bite of any creature to walk the Earth
It’s not easy to determine just how powerful the bite of an animal that has been extinct
for 65 million years may have been. However, scientists at Liverpool University believe
they have come up with an answer. Musculoskeletal biologist Karl Bates and his colleagues developed
a computer model which enabled them to compare the T. rex with some modern day carnivores.
Their results showed that the bite of a tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t just powerful – it was more
powerful than anybody had expected.
An adult male lion can chomp down on its prey with a force of around 4450 Newtons, but that’s
little more than a tickle compared to a large tyrannosaurus rex, which could manage as much
as 60,000 Newtons. This apex predator even boasted a bite three times as powerful as
a great white shark and would have been rivalled only by the biggest of marine predators like
megalodon and Predator X.
7. Those puny arms were stronger than you might think
Powerful and terrifying as it might have been, the T. rex has suffered plenty of ridicule
over the years on account of its tiny arms. At around a metre long, they do look a touch
silly on a dinosaur bigger than a school bus, and they certainly weren’t much use for
feeding as they couldn’t even reach its mouth. However, many scientists believe T.
rex’s arms were far from useless and it may have used them to grapple with prey or
help it clamber up off the ground.
Research suggests the T. rex may have been able to lift around 450 pounds with each arm.
That may not be a huge amount for a dinosaur that stood up to twenty feet tall and weighed
in at around 8 tons, but it’s easily enough to beat even the strongest of humans in an
arm wrestling contest.
6. They may have hunted in packs
For a long time it was thought tyrannosaurus rex was a solitary beast, stalking the prehistoric
plains alone and unloved. This opinion is now being challenged, and many scientists
have come to believe they were social creatures, living and hunting in packs.
Bones from multiple tyrannosaurs have been found in one location on a few occasions,
but this doesn’t necessarily indicate they lived together. The animals could have been
drawn in by a predator trap or the remains drawn together by some other event after their
deaths. However, a recent discovery in Canada revealed tracks of at least three tyrannosaurs
moving parallel to each other ,the strongest indication yet that T. rex may have been a
pack hunter.
Working together may have benefitted the tyrannosaurs by allowing them to tackle larger victims.
The smaller, faster, and more agile juvenile T. rex may have ran down the prey allowing
their larger colleagues to move in and deliver the killer bite.
Tantalisingly, triceratops were present at the same time and place in prehistory as T.
rex, so it’s more than likely that these two most of iconic dinosaurs did battle on
countless occasions.
5. It might just be possible to resurrect a T. rex (or something a lot like one)
Science has now reached the point where it is possible to take cells from an animal that
died decades ago and bring them back to life. There is even some talk of bringing back relatively
recently extinct animals like the passenger pigeon and perhaps even the woolly mammoth.
But could it be possible for us to resurrect dinosaurs, like the tyrannosaurus rex, that
have been extinct for millions of years? Surprisingly, the answer might just be yes.
In Jurassic Park this scientific marvel was achieved using DNA extracted from the blood
found in mosquitoes preserved in amber. This particular method won’t work, DNA breaks
down after a maximum of 6.3 million years, which might be a hell of a long time but not
long enough for us to get our hands on the genetic building blocks of a T. rex. However,
there might just be another option.
To the amazement of the scientific world, a T. rex leg bone was recently discovered
to contain a small amount of soft tissue. Although the DNA is now useless, it is possible
to examine the proteins within the tissue. This has led to speculation from respected
scientists, such as Michio Kaku, that it might just be possible to reverse engineer something
very similar to a dinosaur from their modern day relatives. In other words, we could turn
a chicken into a tyrannosaur.
4. They could see you if you moved
If it does turn out to be possible to resurrect a T. rex then the chances are that someone,
perhaps this guy, will decide the world needs more apex predators the size of a house. When
that happens, science fiction tells us it’s only a matter of time before they break free
and run amok.
Whilst it shouldn’t keep you awake at night, this means there is an ever so tiny chance
you might come face to face with a tyrannosaur looking to turn you into brunch. If you paid
attention during Jurassic Park then you might decide your best chance of survival would
be to stand dead still, after all the movie told us T. rex’s vision was based on movement.
The movie was wrong. T. rex could see just fine whether something was moving or not,
otherwise it would have clumsily stumbled about the place stubbing its toes on boulders
and bumping into trees.
In fact, according to Professor Kent Stevens of the University of Oregon, tyrannosaurus
rex’s vision was far sharper than our own and may even have been superior to that of
an eagle.
So what would be the best course of action when faced with a hungry T. rex? Well, estimates
as to the tyrant lizard king’s speed vary from anywhere between 10 and 40kph, so it
would probably be wise to run away screaming and hope for the best.
3. Their metabolism may have been similar to that of mammals
The T. rex fossils which have been discovered to date show that these dinosaurs led hard
and violent lives. We have already seen that Sue the T. rex left behind the most complete
skeleton yet discovered for this type of dinosaur. A closer look at her bones reveal the punishment
this T. rex endured in her quest to survive.
She had fractures to both sides of her rib cage, evidence of a broken right arm and shoulder
blade, and a serious wound to the lower leg which had caused the bone to expand to twice
its normal size. The injuries were most likely sustained as she attempted to subdue large
prey or during mating, which would almost certainly have been a violent affair for these
gigantic predators.
According to Annette Trinity-Stevens of Montana State University, the way Sue’s bones healed
is more consistent with modern mammals than that of reptiles. This is strong evidence
that the T. rex may have been a warm blooded rather than a cold blooded killer.
2. They had a septic bite
We know that the T. rex had a bite powerful enough to make a pretty big hole in any animal
unfortunate enough to get in the way. However, even those dinosaurs lucky escape the tyrant
lizard king with just a flesh wound would have still been in serious trouble.
Scientists examining the teeth of the T. rex have noticed the striking similarities to
that of modern day komodo dragons. The serrations and grooves would have caused food particles
to get stuck and provided a perfect breeding ground for a whole host of unpleasant bacteria.
Not only would this have resulted in a serious case of bad breath but, like the komodo dragon,
the T. rex probably passed on some of its bacteria to anything it took a nibble on.
If the prey animal was robust enough it might manage to recover from the infection; if not
the T. rex would be able to track down its meal hours or days later, thanks to its extraordinary
sense of smell.
1. There were other species of tyrannosaur
Tyrannosaurus rex, the fearsome tyrant lizard king that roamed the plains of North America
some 65 million years ago, is undoubtedly the most famous tyrannosaur. However, T. rex
did have several long-lost relatives scattered around the globe.
One of these, dubbed the pygmy tyrannosaur despite still measuring in at a hefty twenty
feet from snout to tail, even managed to make a living in the Arctic. Although the region
would have been significantly warmer in the cretaceous period than today, it would have
still presented a considerable challenge for such an animal. There would have been long
periods of darkness and seasons where a decent meal would have been very difficult to obtain.
However, dinosaurs were tough old beasts, and if it hadn’t been for the K-T comet
colliding with the Earth, evolution would have surely followed a very different path,
and the chances are you wouldn’t have been around to read this list today.