Tag: t-rex
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Throwback Thursday #331: Happy (Belated) Unearth Day, SUE!
Last Wednesday was SUE’s Unearth Day! SUE was found by Sue Hendrickson on August 12th, 1990. Sue hung back at camp, while the rest of the team from the Black Hills Institute went to town to fix a flat tire on one of their trucks. Sue decided to explore some area around the camp. She…
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NPR: Mystery bidder buys T. rex nicknamed ‘Gus’ for a record $50 million
NPR has a story about the recent auction of “Gus” the Tyrannosaurus rex at Sotheby’s in New York. The winning bid of 50.1 million represents the highest price ever paid for a dinosaur. “Gus” was found by the late Gary “Gus” Licking, a cattle rancher in Harding County, South Dakota. The same county that has…
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‘Gus’ the T. rex presented in New York ahead of auction
Phys.org has an article about “Gus” the Tyrannosaurus rex. “Gus” lived during the late Cretaceous Period, about 67 million years ago. The fossil is about 61% complete by bone count and 75-80% by bone mass. It was discovered in Harding County, South Dakota in 2021. “Gus” is named after the late rancher Gary “Gus” Licking,…
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High-Energy X-Ray CT Scanning of large, dense fossils
Today’s post comes from Ravi Chandran and Tyler Keillor. Ravi Chandran is an ESCONI member and volunteer in Paul Sereno’s lab. Tyler Keiller is Manager of the fossil lab and past ESCONI member. He has presented at Paleofest and for ESCONI in the past. He is also paleo-artist. The Fossil Lab in Washington Park (5437…
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CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks… Smaller tyrannosaur solves decades-long debate about the T. Rex
CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks has a great segment about Nanotyrannus. There’s an interview with James Napoli of Stony Brook University, who was coauthor on “Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus coexisted at the close of the Cretaceous”, which was published in the journal Nature. Small tyrannosaur fossils belonging to a dinosaur about half the size and a tenth…
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NPR: Scientists thought this fossil was a teen T. rex. Turns out it’s a new tyrannosaur
NPR has a story about Nanotyrannus lamcensis and why it’s a separate species from Tyrannosaurus rex. When the “Dueling Dinosaurs” fossil, which consists of two entangled dinorsaur skeletons, was discovered in 2006, it launched a quite a bit of debate as to whether the tyrannosaur was a juvenile T. rex or a new species of…
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2025 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show – Preview #12: Replica of SUE’s Tooth
This is the preview post #12 for the 2025 ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Live Auction. The ESCONI Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show for 2025 will be held on March 15th and 16th at the DuPage Fairgrounds in Wheaton, IL, which is the same location as last year. All details can be found here.…
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Throwback Thursday #232: Sue visits SUE
This is Throwback Thursday #232. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! So, Sue Hendrickson had a secret visit with her beloved namesake SUE the T. rex in July. The…
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Scientists assess how large dinosaurs could really get
A giant T. rex emerges from the shadows of a forest. Mark Witton © Mark Witton. Science Daily has a post from the Canadian Museum of Nature that looks at the maximum size of dinosaurs. New research published in the journal Ecology and Evolution found that Tyrannosaurs rex might have been 70% heavier than currently accepted.…
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We’ve Probably Been Wrong About T. Rex Again, New Study Says
Nature’s Science Alert has a post about Tyrannosaurs rex. Ok, just how smart was T. rex? Back in 2023, when a controversial paper postulated that T. rex was about as intelligent as modern monkeys, most researchers were skeptical. Now, a new study “How smart was T. rex? Testing the claims of exceptional cognition in dinosaurs…
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New Species of Giant Tyrannosaur Discovered in New Mexico
SciNews has news of a new species of Tyrannosaur. This one is called Tyrannosaurs mcraeensis. It was described from fossils found in the Hall Lake Formation of New Mexico. This is most likely a sister species of Tyrannosaurus rex. which existed about 3 to 5 million years before T. rex. The paper “A giant tyrannosaur…
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How the T. Rex Built Up That Bone-Crushing Bite
The New York Times’ Trilobites column has a story about Tyrannosaurus rex. Just how did T-rex get its nasty bite… slowly over the years. In paper published in the journal The Anatomical Record, scientists looked at how the powerful oral feature had evolved. It was not easy for the researchers to build 3-D skull models of nine tyrannosaur species for their…
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This is how many humans a T. Rex would need to eat each day to stay alive
Photo credit: Getty The BBC’s Science Focus website has an intriguing story about Tyrannosaurus rex. Iintriguing and a bit disturbing… but “How many humans would a T. rex need to eat to stay alive?” An adult Tyrannosaurus rex weighed about seven tonnes. A crocodile eats about five per cent of its body weight per week, whereas a warm-blooded predator,…
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Throwback Thursday #164: Looking Back At ESCONI for June 2023
This is Throwback Thursday #164. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! 25 Years Ago – June 1998 50 Years Ago – June 1973 70 Years Ago – June 1953
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Throwback Thursday #151: Looking Back at ESCONI for March 2023
This is Throwback Thursday #151. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! 25 Years Ago – March 1998 50 Years Ago – March 1973 70 Years Ago – March 1953
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BBC: The 120-year search for the purpose of T. rex’s arms
The BBC has a story about that looks into how Tyrannosaurus rex used it’s small arms. T. rex and it’s close relatives had notoriously small arms for their size. Since its discovery in 1902 by Barnum Brown, paleontologists have wondered how they used their puny arms. The end of the season was approaching rapidly –…
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All the better to better eat you with: Dinosaurs evolved different eye socket shapes to allow stronger bites
Phys.org has a story about the strength of a T-rex bite. A new study, published in the journal Communications Biology, looked at the shape of eye sockets to determine how it affected bite force. The skulls of about 500 different dinosaurs were analyzed and the researchers found that a circular eye socket was prone to…
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Splitting T. Rex Into 3 Species Becomes a Dinosaur Royal Rumble
The New York Times Science column has a story about Tyrannosaurus rex. Back in February 2022, a paper in the journal Evolutionary Biology proposed that Tyrannosaurus rex is actually three distinct species – Tyrannosaurus rex, Tyrannosaurus imperator, and Tyrannosaurus regina. The paper pointed to differences like number of “incisor” teeth and whether the animal was…
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For dinos like T. rex, puny arms may have been the price of a giant head
Science.org has a story about the discovery of a new theropod dinosaur. This one is called Meraxes gigas, after a Targaryen dragon from Game of Thrones. It lived about 95 million years ago in what is now the Patagonian Desert of Argentina. It belonged to a family of theropod dinosaurs called Carcharodontosauridae. All the details can…
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What We’ve Discovered About the ‘Tyrant Lizard King’ Since the Nation’s T. rex Was Unearthed
Smithsonian Magazine has a post about Tyrannosaurus rex. To date, about 50 T. rexes have been found, quite a few of those have been fragmentary. The Nation’s T. rex was discovered in 1988 in Montana by local rancher Kathy Wankel. It is often referred to as the “Wankel Rex”. Since then, we have learned so…
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PBS Eons: Where Are All the Medium-Sized Dinosaurs?
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about T. rex and the other carnivores that lived (or didn’t live) along side them. The remains of medium-sized predatory dinosaurs are pretty rare in places where giant predators like T. rex existed. Which is weird, because that’s just not how ecosystems work today.
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Juvenile Tyrannosaurs Had Powerful Bite, New Study Shows
SciNews has a story about Tyrannosaurus rex. A recent study looked the bite force of juvenile T. rex and found they had a bite force somewhere between modern hyenas and crocodiles at about 5,641 newtons. Humans deliver a force less than 1/10 at around 300 newtons. Details of the story can be found in a…
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NYT: How Many Tyrannosaurus Rexes Ever Lived on Earth? Here’s a New Clue
The New York Tmes has a story about how many Tyrannosaurus rex ever lived. Actually, this story showed up in numerous places.. SciTechDaily, USA Today, NBC, etc. Apparently, it’s big news that about 2.5 billion total T rex roamed the Earth during the time their species existed! The original paper appeared in the journal Science.…
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LiveScience: Cretaceous cold case of ‘dueling’ T. rex and Triceratops may finally be solved
LiveScience has a story about the “Dueling Dinosaurs”. This extraordinary fossil specimen of two of the most complete dinosaurs skeletons ever discovered. One is a Triceratops and the other is a Tyrannosaurs rex and they may possibly be locked in 67 million year old mortal combat. These fossils are heading to North Carolina State University to undergo some extensive study. …
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Throwback Thursday #31: The Nanotyrannus Find on the Burpee 2002 Montana Expedition
This is Throwback Thursday #31. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! Jane was discovered during the Burpee Museum’s paleontology expedition to Montana’s Hell Creek Formation back in 2001. The…
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Stan the T. rex just became the most expensive fossil ever sold
LiveScience has a story about the sale of Stan the T-rex on October 6th, 2020. Stan sold for $32 million and set a new record for the sale of a fossil. SUE the T-rex, which went on sale back in 1997, had the previous record as it sold for $8.36 million. Many paleontologists are dismayed…
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Throwback Thursday #20: Rediscovering a Dinosaur Named Elmer
The Field Museum has a blog post about a dinosaur named for Elmer Riggs. Elmer the man, was the Field Museum’s first field paleontologist. He collected fossils on multiple continents (North and South America). He was employed by the Field Museum from 1899 until he retired in 1942. Although he found countless specimens for the…
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Meet the New Monopoly Tokens: A Rubber Ducky, a T-rex and a Penguin
Apparently, I don’t pay attention to events in the board game world… even when they touch the paleontology world. A co-worker recently made me aware that there is now a T-rex piece in every Monopoly game, which is very cool! This change happened about 3 years ago in 2017. The NY Times even did a…
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ESCONI Flashback Friday #36: SUE at the Field Museum
As part of the celebration of ESCONI’s 70th Anniversary, here is Flashback Friday post #36. If you have pictures or stories to contribute, please send them over to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! SUE had her Grand Opening at the Field Museum on May 17th, 2000. Here is a link to the ESCONI page to document the event. …
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Teenage T. Rex Fossils Reveal Haphazard Growth Spurts
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about teenage T. rex fossils. The article discusses a recent paper that appeared in Science Advances. That paper readdresses the two sleek, and slender tyrannosaurs, nicknamed Jane and Petey, at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois and concludes that the two specimens are juvenile T. rexes, not…
