Tag: tyrannosaurus
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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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How Smithsonian Fossil Preparators Are Re-Excavating a Tyrannosaur from Its Past on Display
Smithsonian Magazine’s National Fossil Day post looks at a tyrannosaur specimen that has been on display for many years. The animal, Gorgosaurus libratus, had been at the museum since 1918. It was found in the rugged badlands around the Red Deer River in Alberta, Canada. It lived about 75 million years ago during the Cretaceous…
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1.7 billion Tyrannosaurus rexes walked the Earth before going extinct, new study estimates
An artist’s interpretation of what Tyrannosaurus rex may have looked like. (Image credit: Shutterstock) LiveScience has a story about how many Tyrannosaurus rex individuals ever lived. Back in April 2021, a paper in the journal Science estimated that 2.5 billion T. rex had existied from 68 to 65 million years ago. Now a new paper…
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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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Dinosaur Cowboys Are Hunting for the Next $32 Million T. Rex
Bloomberg has a story about the Dinosaur Cowboy. Known for discovering the “Dueling Dinosaurs”, Clayton Phipps is a rancher and an amateur paleontologist. The story does a great job describing the controversy around the commercial exploitation of fossils, mainly dinosaurs. On a sunny, 99-degree day in northern Montana, Clayton Phipps grabs a backpack and heads…
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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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Two New Appalachian Dinosaurs Discovered
SciNews has a post about two new dinosaurs from Allalachia during the Cretaceous Period. Back in the Cretaceous Period, North America was bisected by the Western Interior Seaway. In the west was Laramidia for which the fossil record is very rich. The land mass to the east is called Appalachia. Much less is know about…
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Reconstruction of Tyrannosaur Braincases Shows More Variation Than Previously Thought
SciTechDaily has a story about tyrannosaur skulls. Researchers in Canada and Argentina scanned the skulls to reconstruct the braincase of two well-preserved Daspletosaurs. Their research, which found more variation than expected, was published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. Among the fierce carnivores that lived during the late Cretaceous was a predator named Daspletosaurus. The massive tyrannosaur,…
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Phys.org: When tyrannosaurs dominated, medium-sized predators disappeared
Phys.org has a story about tyrannosaurs… seems they didn’t share much. A new study published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences found that tyrannosaur juveniles out competed medium sized carnivores wherever their adults rose to dominance. The research conducted by Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology, verified…
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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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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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LiveScience: 1st of their kind baby tyrannosaur fossils unearthed
LiveScience has a story about the first baby tyrannosaur ever discovered. These new fossils, which may be a tyrannosaur embryo, were discovered in Montana in 1983. They were reexamined due to research into a toe claw of a baby tyrannosaur that was found in Alberta Canada in 2017. The research, which is not yet published…
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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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Phys.org: Meet T-Rex’s older cousin: The Reaper of Death
Phys.org has a story about a new tyrannosaur. This one is called Thanatotheristes degrootorum, Greek for “Reaper of Death”. It lived some 80 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Periond, in what is now Canada. Details were published recently in the journal Cretaceous Research. “We chose a name that embodies what this tyrannosaur was as…
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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…
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T. rex used a stiff skull to eat its prey
Phys.org has a story about the strength of a Tyrannosaurus rex bite. This story describes research which appeared in a paper published in the journal The Anatomical Record. A Tyrannosaurus rex could bite hard enough to shatter the bones of its prey. But how it accomplished this feat without breaking its own skull bones has…
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ScienceDaily: T. Rex had an air conditioner in its head, study suggests
Science Daily has a post about Tyrannosaurs rex and how it might have handled the heat of the Cretaceous. As an animal gets bigger, it gets harder and harder to dump heat. That’s because the volume of its body grows faster than surface area as the body gets bigger. Researchers at the University of Missouri,…
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The Guardian: Perhaps the best dinosaur fossil ever discovered. So why has hardly anyone seen it?
The Guardian has an article about the so called “Dueling Dinosaurs”. The “Dueling Dinosaurs” are a large fossil plate that consists of both a 28 foot long ceratoptian (probably Triceratops horridus) and a 22 foot long theropod (possibly Tyrannosaurus rex or the controversial Nanotyrannus lancensis). Both skeletons are fairly complete, with exceptional preservation, fully articulated,…
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Is “Scotty” the Biggest T. rex? Maybe Not!
Brian Switeck on his Laelaps blog has a great post that discusses why “Scotty” may NOT be the biggest T.rex. Our local favorite, “SUE” of the Field Museum has long been billed as the largest, oldest, and most complete T.rex ever found. There isn’t any doubt in the “most complete” title. But, largest and oldest…
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USPS: T-rex Postage Stamps Coming Soon To A Post Office Near You!
The USPS will be releasing a pane of T-rex postage stamps starting June 28th, 2019. Details are here. With this pane of 16 stamps, the Postal Service brings Tyrannosaurus rex to life — some 66 million years after its demise. One design illustrates a face-to-face encounter with a T. rex approaching through a forest clearing; another shows the same…
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NYT: ‘Scotty’ the T. Rex Is the Heaviest Ever Found, Scientists Say
The NY Times has a piece about Scotty the Tyrannosaurus rex. The specimen was discovered in Saskatchewan in 1991. A paper published in the scientific journal “The Anatomical Record estimates Scotty to have weighed 19,555 pounds, which would make it heavier than SUE – estimated between 12,000 – 14,000. Size and age are also seen…
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AMNH: T. rex: The Ultimate Predator
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a new exhibit opening on March 11th, 2019. It’s called “T. rex: The Ultimate Predator” and it runs through August 9th, 2020. How did T. rex evolve to become the most fearsome carnivore of the Mesozoic? T. rex: The Ultimate Predator will introduce you to…
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Quicks & Quarks: Tiny tyrannosaur fossil helps scientists understand how T-rex grew so large
CBC’s Quirks & Quarks has a segment about a tiny tyrannosaur that helps shed light on how T-rex grew so large. The animal, Moros intrepodus, was found by Dr. Lindsay Zanno. She’s head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and research professor at N.C. State University in Raleigh. You might remember…
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A Fresh Science Makeover for SUE
The new Sue exhibit is schedule to open on December 21st, 2018. It will include many new facts and clarifications. Those changes are nicely summarized in a new Field Museum blog post. Though SUE the T. rex’s fossils are a snapshot of life 67 million years ago, the science around extinct animals is rarely set…
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Newly Discovered Tyrant Dinosaur Stalked Ancient New Mexico
The Smithsonian has a post about a new tyrannosaur. Its name is Dynamoterror and it lived about 80 million years ago in what is now New Mexico. The paper, published in PeerJ, describes the 30-foot-long meat eater, which probably snacked on hadrosaurs, armored dinosaurs, and ceratopsians that lived in the hot, humid, and lush forests…
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What’s the Point of T-Rex’s Tiny Arms?
The Daily Beast has an article about T-Rex’s tiny arms. What were they used for, grabbing, slashing, mating? Steven Stanley, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, presented a paper at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. The conventional wisdom, as far as T. rex arms go, is that they atrophied over…
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MinuteEarth: Why Did T Rex Have Such Tiny Arms?
MinuteEarth on YouTube has a neat little video about T Rex and it’s tiny arms. Enjoy!
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Meet the New Tyrannosaurs
Scientific American has a video of Dr. Stephen Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh. In it, he charts the thrilling ascent of the tyrannosaurs. The May issue of Scientific American has a story called “Rise of the Tyrannosaurs”, which is highlighted on the cover of the magazine.
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Friday – General Meeting – “Tyrannosaur Research”
ESCONI General Meeting. 8:00 p.m. College of Dupage, Building K, Rm 161. Thomas Carr from the Dinosaur Discovery Museum will speak on “Tyrannosaur research and the bird evolution gallery at the Dinosaur Discovery Museum”.
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Fossil Auction in Las Vegas
From Art Knowledge News via geology.com: …One of the largest known Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever discovered will be offered by international auctioneers Bonhams & Butterfields on Saturday, October 3, 2009 during the company’s first Natural History auction to be held at The Venetian ® in Las Vegas. The auction will contain approximately 50 lots of…
