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Tyrannosaurus rex was a huge meat-eating dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretaceous Period. It is the most well-known dinosaur and one of the last ones to appear prior to the great extinction. T. rex lived in a humid, semi-tropical environment, in open forests with nearby rivers and in coastal forested swamps. The seasons were mild. Until recently, Tyrannosaurus rex was the biggest known carnivorous dinosaur; Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus were slightly bigger.

Trex

Description[]

Tyrannosaurus rex was a fierce predator that walked on two powerful muscular legs. It had a huge head with large, pointy teeth and well developed muscles.It had small arms,each with two fingers. Each bird-like foot had three large toes, all equipped with claws, plus a smaller dew claw on a vestigial toe.

Tyrannosaurus had a slim,stiff pointed tail which provided balance and allowed quick turns while running. The rear part of the tail was stiffened by interlocking vertebral zygopophyses. T. rex's neck was short and muscular. Its body was solidly built but its bones were hollow. Tyrannosaurus rex was up to 40 feet (12 m) long, about 20 feet (6 m) tall. The arms were only about 3 feet (1 m) long. Tyrannosaurus rex was roughly 5 to 7 tons in weight. The enormous skull was about 5 feet (1.5 m) long.

800px-Fossil Tyranausaurus Rex at the Royal Tyrell Museum, Alberta, Canada

The eye sockets in the skull are 4 inches (10.2 cm) across; the eyeballs would have been about 3 inches (7.6 cm) in diameter. T. rex's jaws were up to 4 feet (1.2 m) long and had 50 to 60 thick, conical, bone-crunching teeth that ranged in size from very small to over 9 inches (23 cm) long. Adult had a variety of sizes of teeth in their jaws at one time, as teeth were broken and new (smaller) ones grew in to replace them.

One T. rex was found with some teeth up to 13 inch (33 cm) long. T. rex could eat up to 500 pounds (230 kg) of meat and bones in one bite! Tyrannosaurus rex had a wrap-around overbite; when T. rex closed its mouth, the upper parts of the lower jaw's teeth fit inside the upper teeth. Fossilized specimens of T. rex's rough, scaly skin have been found. It was bumpy, like an alligator's skin, and has been described as a "lightly pebbled skin." Tyrannosaurus rex probably lived in forests, where its prey (plant-eating dinosaurs) could find plenty of food. Among its contemporaries were Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and many species of hadrosaurs which were a food source for T. rex. There were also other reptiles like crocodiles and turtles, fishes, small mammals, insects, and pterosaurs. T. rex fossils have been found in western North America. Tyrannosaurus had large visual lobes in its brain that processed visual information. It also had depth perception About 30 incomplete Tyrannosaurus rex fossils have been found. One T. rex footprint has been found in an undisclosed location in New Mexico,U.S.A. Fossilized T. rex dung has also been found. The first Tyrannosaurus rex was first found by Barnum Brown in 1902, in Hell Creek, Montana.

Feeding Habits[]

T-rex would have hunted prey like Edmontosaurus, Parasaurolophus, Triceratops and Ankylosaurus. It may have actually hunted them actively, or scavenged their carcasses, but most likely it did both. T-rex could crush bone, allowing it to digest nutritional parts like the marrow, which other dinosaurs couldn't reach. Tyrannosaurus couldn't chew, so it swallowed meat whole. They may have competed over carcasses, or even hunted in packs. Tyrannosaurus rex may have been an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, although some experts have suggested it was primarily a scavenger. The debate over Tyrannosaurus as apex predator or scavenger is among the longest running debates in paleontology.

Trex-triceratops 73374 1

Gallery[]

Related sites[]

Popular Culture[]

T.rex is definitively the most well-known dinosaur.It has been featured in movies,games and books

Main Article:Tyrannosaurus in popular culture

  1. Tyrannosaurus Rex at TvTropes

Trivia[]

Paleontologist James Farlow calculated the number of lawyers a grown Tyrannosaurus had to eat (based on a scene from the movie Jurassic Park, in which a lawyer became T. rex fodder) to stay alive. Taken an average weight of 68 kilograms, 292 lawyers would be needed to keep one T. rex happy for a year!












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