What is a brief description of T. rex?

Common Name :

Tyrannosaurus rex

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Scientific Name :

Tyrannosaurus rex

Type :

Prehistoric Animals

Diet :

Carnivore

Size :

40 feet long and 12 feet tall

Weight :

Between 5.5 and eight tons

Size relative to a bus :

Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the most ferocious predators to ever walk the Earth. With a massive body, sharp teeth, and jaws so powerful they could crush a car, this famous carnivore dominated the forested river valleys in western North America during the late Cretaceous period, 68 million years ago.

Although T. rex is a household name, what we know about this tyrannosaur is constantly evolving. Improved technologies, such as biomechanical modeling and x-ray imaging, have allowed scientists to gain a deeper understanding of how this apex predator lived.

Strengths

Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name means &#;king of the tyrant lizards,&#; was built to rule. This dinosaur&#;s muscular body stretched as long as 40 feet&#;about the size of a school bus&#;from its snout to the tip of its powerful tail. Weighing up to eight tons, T. rex stomped headfirst across its territory on two strong legs. These dinosaurs likely preyed on living animals and scavenged carcasses&#;and sometimes they even ate one another.

The head of a T. rex was the real stuff of nightmares. This fierce carnivore was optimally built for crunching through its meals, with a stiff skull that allowed it to channel all the force of its muscles into one bite&#;delivering up to six tons of pressure. This dinosaur used its 60 serrated teeth, each about eight inches long, to pierce and grip flesh, throwing prey into the air and swallowing it whole. To keep itself from overheating while crushing prey with its mighty jaws, the giant animal had vents in its head to help its brain stay cool, similar to those found in alligators.

Tyrannosaurus rex was also adept at finding its prey thanks to a keen sense of smell. While scientists have known for a while that this dinosaur devoted large portions of its brain to processing smell, studies have recently revealed that T. rex had almost as many genes encoding its olfactory receptors as a house cat does today. This powerful snout also likely helped T. rex find mates and detect other predators.

Weaknesses

Not everything about Tyrannosaurus rex was fierce, however. This dinosaur had unexpectedly puny arms, and the function of these little limbs is a source of debate among scientists. Some believe the animal&#;s arms were an evolutionary leftover&#;like the pelvic bones of a snake&#;or served non-predatory purposes like helping it grip a mate. Others argue that T. rex&#;s arms may have been adapted for &#;vicious slashing&#; at close quarters, given their ability to inflict deep wounds with four-inch claws.

And while they had strong thighs, these dinosaurs were not speedy. They could only walk briskly at up to 12 miles an hour&#;likely not fast enough to chase a speeding Jeep, as depicted in the movie Jurassic Park. Using biomechanical models, scientists have theorized that if these heavy animals moved any faster, they would have shattered the bones in their feet.

Growth spurts and extinction

Tyrannosaurus rex had a life expectancy of about 28 years. Previous studies have suggested that it went through a growth spurt in its teenage years, but until recently, scientists didn&#;t know much about how it grew from a hatchling to a powerful predator.

In January , a study of the fossils of Nanotyrannus&#;a smaller tyrannosaur that was believed to have lived alongside T. rex&#;revealed that the bones were more likely from a juvenile T. rex than another species. If so, the study then suggests that Tyrannosaurus rex&#;s growth rate varied as it aged, and it could slow down its growth when food was scarce, a major evolutionary advantage.

In spite of all its advantages, T. rex was no match for the mass extinction event that claimed three quarters of life on Earth 66 million years ago. This cataclysm occurred when an asteroid or comet the size of a mountain slammed into Earth, wiping out Tyrannosaurus rex along with the rest of the non-avian dinosaurs and bringing a sudden end to the Cretaceous period.

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Since paleontologists have recognized the T. rex as the only formal member of the genus Tyrannosaurus. This classification remained largely unchallenged until , when some paleontologists suggested on the basis of variation in femurs and teeth among T. rex specimens that T. rex should be separated into three species (T. rex, T. imperator, and T. regina); however, this division is controversial. Moreover, the results of a separate analysis performed in of a partial skull and lower jaw , which were assigned to T. rex initially, suggested that these fossils belonged to a new species which the study&#;s authors called T. mcraeensis.

Tyrannosaurus rex , (Tyrannosaurus rex), species of predatory dinosaurs that lived during the end of the Cretaceous Period (about 66 million years ago) known from fossils found in the United States and Canada dating to between about 80 million and 66 million years ago. Tyrannosaurus rex is the best-known and largest member of a group of theropod dinosaurs called tyrannosaurs ; its scientific name is Latin for &#;king of the tyrant lizards.&#;

Form and function

T. rex was large and walked on powerfully developed hind limbs, which, scientists estimate, could have enabled the animal to run 32 km (20 miles) per hour for short distances. If T. rex had stood upright, it would have been more than 6.5 meters (21 feet) tall, but its usual posture was horizontal, with the body carried parallel to the ground and the tail held off the ground as a counterbalance. In this position a large adult, weighing 4,000 to 7,000 kg (about 9,000 to 15,000 pounds), could measure more than 12 meters (about 39 feet) long. The largest T. rex specimens known are &#;Sue&#;&#;which was discovered in South Dakota in and measures 12.8 meters (42 feet) long&#;and &#;Scotty&#;&#;which was found in Eastend, Saskatchewan, in and whose length and weight were estimated at 13 meters (42.7 feet) long and 8,870 kg (19,555 pounds), respectively.

Skull and dentition

The species also had a massive skull&#;with the size of most specimens reaching up to 1.3 meters (about 4.3 feet) long. (The longest known T. rex skull is &#;Maximus,&#; an exceptional specimen spanning 2 meters [6.6 feet] long). The skull bones of large specimens are often several centimeters thick and are strongly braced to each other, which suggests a resistance to the forces of biting, both inflicted upon and received from other tyrannosaurs. Engineering models, in fact, show that the bite force of T. rex would have been capable of easily ripping through the roof of an automobile, as portrayed in the motion picture Jurassic Park. The huge mouth contained some 60 teeth that could protrude as far as 15 cm (6 inches). The crowns of the teeth were shed and regrown frequently (every 250 days or so, estimated on the basis of microscopic lines visible within the teeth). Serrations of the teeth bear deep pocketlike recesses in which bacteria may have flourished to provide an infectious bite.

The front teeth are small and U-shaped. The side teeth are large, and in adults they become even larger, fewer in number, and D-shaped in cross section rather than daggerlike as in most theropods, or flesh-eating dinosaurs. In juveniles the teeth are laterally compressed and serrated front and back, like those of other theropods. In mature individuals, however, the teeth fall neatly into three general classes: upper front teeth, upper side teeth, and lower jaw teeth.

Other skeletal features

In contrast to the powerful jaws and legs, the forelimbs of tyrannosaurs were very small (less than the length of the shoulder blade), and in some forms the hands were reduced to only two digits. Although a mechanical reconstruction suggests that the musculature of the arms of T. rex and some other large tyrannosaurs could have lifted about 180 kg (400 pounds), the hands would not have been able to reach the mouth or grasp prey. The hind limb bones appear massive but are lightly constructed: the thickness of the bone wall is only about 20 percent of the bones&#; diameter&#;a ratio approaching that of many birds.

Determining the sex of individual dinosaurs from fossil remains continues to be a challenging task for paleontologists; however, techniques applied to the study of modern birds have helped scientists discover the sex of some T. rex skeletons. During the reproductive cycles of female birds, a layer of bone (medullary bone) is often deposited on the inner wall of the long bones. This process has been recognized in some fossils of tyrannosaurs (and of a few other dinosaurs), indicating that these specimens are female. Counts of the annual growth rings that are laid down in the long bones from early growth stages to adulthood show that T. rex effectively reached full size in less than 20 years.

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