Tyrannosaurus rex

By Neal Immega, Paleontologist and Master Docent

Written in 2003 for use in the Paleo Hall documentation
Submitted by Neal Immega for use on the HMNS Volunteer Website on 3/11/08

“Gigantism precedes extinction.” Cope’s law. Well, maybe. But Tyranosaurus rex,
every 12-year-old’s favorite dino, did appear toward the end of the Cretaceous and the
end of the Cretaceous was also the end of the dinosaurs.

T. rex standing next to his favorite lunch, a hadrosaur.

Barnum Brown found the first one in Arizona in 1902. In 1905, Henry Osborn called it
“tyrant lizard king” because it was the biggest, baddest, meanest critter that he could
think of Since then, though, a number of contenders have been found – including the
Egyptian Spinosaurus which featured in Jurassic Park3 and the South American
Gigantosaurus – that were likely bigger. That is what you get when you name a dinosaur
the biggest and people have the next 100 years to prove there are bigger ones.

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 T. rex claw with a hadrosaur in the background.

Legs. Lets talk about how dinosaurs kill things. Kick boxers win over punch boxers –
stronger muscles come into play. It is likely that T. rex used its massive rear legs to make
that long toe claw into a slashing, killing weapon. The claws would have been even more
impressive than they appear on our skeleton because in life they would have had a horny
covering. Besides, the head is lightly built of many plates of thin bone, almost lacy (if
anything that big and fierce-looking can be called fragile!). Would the dinosaur have
risked its head if it did not have to do so? Of course, not everyone believes this
interpretation.

Walking speed could have been as high as 20 mph. This animal may not have needed to
run.

The front legs are puny-looking arms – it is hard to see what they were good for. Some
people scornfully call them “tummy scratchers” but don’t dismiss them entirely. They
were well-muscled and larger than those of a full-grown man.

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Teeth. There has always been debate about whether this dinosaur was a predator or a
scavenger. There is a good chance that it was a road kill eater – like a modern lion, would
rather eat someone else’s kill. The large number of broken teeth found in association
with bonebeds of prey animals are evidence for this.

T. rex’s huge, conical teeth are not sharp but do have two serrated edges. An animal with
similar teeth is the Komodo dragon – the serrations hold bits of food and provide a
breeding ground for bacteria. The Komodo’s bite is septic – the prey dies and the
Komodo dines at leisure. So maybe T. rex was sort of a self-potentiating scavenger.

The teeth were always growing – this means that the T. rex was always teething and,
possibly, always grumpy.  The teeth were strong, with nine-inch roots, but commonly
broke off and are found in with bones of prey animals. If you see a tooth with a root, it
came out of the skeleton after death. Broken teeth are shed teeth. Notice that the teeth
are various lengths. This is because they grow and fall out all the time. Any time you see
a reptile skeleton with uniform teeth (like our Mosasaur), that is a bad reconstruction.

Scientists have suggested that T.rex used its teeth in two different ways during feeding.
The teeth at the front of the pointed head may have been used as for nibbling, delicately

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pulling off strips of meat from between bones like vertebrae. The whole formidable
battery, driven by the huge muscles of the jaw and the strong stiff neck, might have been
used in a “puncture and pull” bite. It would take something like this to account for the
large tooth marks found on the bones of some prey animals.

T. rex skull – nose view.

Skull. The rest of the fossil skull is mostly air. T. rex’s brain cavity is about as large as
the fists of three children, held together. This is still very large for a dinosaur. By
comparison, Dipsy had a brain the size of the end joint of your thumb. It is thought that
the olfactory lobes were very large. Much of the rest of the head cavity was taken up by
sinus cavities and stuff. That is why the Jurassic Park T. rex went around sniffing things.

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Notice the pits in the jaw. That is where nerves penetrate the jaw to control the lips. Yes,
T. rex has lips and that the lips are nearly to the jaw hinge. This means that T. rex does
not have a cheek. I tell the children, that T. rex is a very messy eater because she does not
have a cheek to keep the food in her mouth. Note that I said “her”. The big animals are
girls! The jaw is split in front for expansion to allow T. rex to swallow huge pieces of
meat.

A stiff tail, horizontally held, balanced the skull. One of the reasons for a lacy skull is to
lighten the load on the neck.

Jaw. Many dinosaurs have an additional joint in their jaw to allow it to open wider
sideways. You can see this joint in the labeled picture. This joint works in combination
with the split in the front.

Neck. See the tendons in the neck? Dr. Bakker has postulated that T. rex has very strong
neck muscles and hence tendons to attach them to the next to pull it head down quickly as
it bites to have a more powerful strike.

Age. When the American Museum of Natural History had its exhibit on feathered
dinosaurs, we learned that the age of the animal could be determined by counting the
growth rings in the fibula (a bone in the lower leg). The oldest animal that they tested is
Sue (in the Field Museum) at 26 years old. The original of our skeleton has not been
tested.

T. rex shoulder.

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Shoulder. A human shoulder looks amazingly like a dinosaur's shoulder with a free
floating shoulder blade mounted on the outside of the ribs. This is just one piece of
evidence that we are related.

Family. Males were probably smaller, females larger. One juvenile T. rex, called
“Tinker”, has been found, with adults, so they may have lived in family groups. Some
very large coprolites have been found which people would like to attribute to T. rex – if
this is right, then the contents indicate that T. rex ate ceratopsians and other T. rexes. Sue
has bite marks in her head, about the right size for another T.rex.

The Tyrannosaurs were theropod dinosaurs. A lot of folks argue that birds are close
relatives. Both birds and theropods have:
− Hollow, delicate bones. Useful for running quickly as well as for flying.
− Bipedal. Legs and feet adapted for walking on two legs.
− Wishbone. A wishbone connects the two clavicle bones (collarbones), which join the shoulders, rib
cage, and breastbone. Sue has a wishbone – our skeleton does not have one preserved.
− Long, thin shoulder blades
− 3-clawed feet
− Wrists that swivel. The hand can fold back along the arm.
− Anorbital fenestra. The holes in the skull are the same in dinosaurs and birds (they are “diapsids”)>.
− Feathers??

A series of new theropod dinosaur fossils in China have impressions of feathers. Pre-
flight, feathers might have been useful for thermal insulation, display, or balance during
running. If T. rex had features, they were likely primitive feathers with barbs that did not
hook together. Perhaps only the young were downy. Without fossil evidence, people can
only hypothesize.

Our skeleton is a replica of a specimen from the Museum of the Rockies. The specimen
came from the Upper Cretaceous, from the Hell Creek formation of Montana. Most
museums keep the original bones in drawers and have replicas on display. Fossil bones
develop a “disease”: pyrite decomposes in the bones and crumbles them. There are only
about a dozen “substantially complete” fossils of this animal, and people loathe drilling
holes in the bones to put in armature rods, which is the only solution unless you have
unlimited money to make a jewelry-clasp-style mount as was done for Sue. And, yes,
don’t even think of mounting real bones in a pose with one foot off the ground, like ours.
That would put a pretty good tonnage of bone in the air. Look out below!

By the way, there are other Tyrannosaurs, six species described from 1892 to 1979, from
Montana to east Asia, including a “nano” T. rex (a tiny adult) in Dinosaur National
Monument. There has been some rethinking of these, and some may not be separate
species – males and females may have been quite different. There are quite a large
number (maybe 10) of closely related theropods with similar anatomy and lifestyles.

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If you want to know more:
Abler, William L.., 1999, “The Teeth of the Tyrannosaurs”, Scientific American, 281(3):50-51.
Baker, Robert T., 1986, Dinosaur Heresies. William Morrow & Co. ASIN: 0688042872
Erikson, Gregory M., 1999, “Breathing Life into Tyrannosaurus rex”, Scientific American, 281(3):42-49.
Horner, John R. and Lessem, Don, 1993, The Complete T. rex. Simon and Schuster. ASIN: 0671741853
Wald, Matthew L., 2003, “Which Came Fist, the Feather or the Bird?” Scientific American, 288(3):84-93.

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