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| Watercolor reconstruction by Christopher DiPiazza of a Tyrannosaurus barfing up some nice predigested meat for its babies. Yup, those are tiny feathers. Given the most recent findings confirming Tyrannosaurus had fine scales, these feathers are sparse enough to have still been a possibility. Also note how the proportions of the babies are leggier and over all more gracile than the adult. |
Tyrannosaurus is the most well-known and loved dinosaur of all time. This is because for a very long time it was by far the largest meat-eating dinosaur known to science. In more recent history several other meat-eating dinosaurs have been discovered that rival or even surpass the tyrant king in length, but Tyrannosaurus is currently still widely accepted as the most robust.
The head of Tyrannosaurus is iconic, and easily distinguishable from those of other dinosaurs. Its general shape is somewhat rectangular, and its face, especially near the rear of the jaw, is wider than what you would see in other dinosaurs. Being wider in the back of the jaws suggests that part of the skull could withstand more force, and there were likely powerful biting muscles attached there in life. Tyrannosaurus would have had strong eyesight, complete with good depth perception, as well as an extremely good sense of smell. Its nose would have had one of the most acute senses of smell of any animal, alive or extinct, known. Scientists can tell this by looking at the negative space inside of the skull, where the brain used to be, getting an accurate shape of the brain. Thanks to this, it can be observed that the parts of the brain associated with sight and smell were proportionally large and well-developed.
The teeth of Tyrannosaurus were larger than those of any other dinosaur (some were a foot long!) and totally unique in form. Most every other kind of meat-eating dinosaur tooth was either flattened and blade-like, for slicing meat, or pointed, and cone-shaped, for holding on. The teeth of Tyrannosaurus, however, were not only curved and serrated, but also really thick. (comparable to the shape of bananas actually...pointy, serrated bananas.) This suggests that Tyrannosaurus teeth were adept at simply puncturing through whatever they bit into, including bone. Scientists estimate, thanks to computer simulations of the skull of Tyrannosaurus, that it could bite down with over 12 thousand pounds of pressure per square inch, making it the owner of the strongest jaws of any known land animal. Fossilized dung associated with T. rex even has tiny bits of crushed bone in it, proving this dinosaur had no problem crunching up and eating some bone as it ate. This makes sense when you consider the animals Tyrannosaurus was coexisting with and feeding on. As the result of one of the most extreme evolutionary arms races in natural history, dinosaurs like Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, both of which coexisted with Tyrannosaurus, were more-or-less the largest and most heavily-armored forms of each of their families. Tyrannosaurus, in turn, was the largest and most powerful of its family, the tyrannosaurids. In fact, there is direct evidence of Tyrannosaurus having fed on dinosaurs like Triceratops, despite the solid-bone frill, thanks to Tyrannosaurus teeth found embedded in Triceratops bones. Theres even more evidence of Tyrannosaurus pursuing and feeding on the duck-billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, including a healed bite wound. This proves that the plant-eater escaped a Tyrannosaurus attack, implying the tyrant could have been both a scavenger and an active predator.
The rest of Tyrannosaurus' body was interesting too. It is well-known for its proportionally small arms, which are actually about the same length as adult human arms! Despite being the butt of many jokes, Tyrannosaurus' arms were actually quite strong. Paleontologists estimate, by closely studying the arm bones and predicting the amount of muscle that would have attached to them in life, that each one of Tyrannosaurus' arms could lift over four hundred pounds of weight! The function of the tiny arms, which were tipped with two functional fingers and claws, is still a mystery. Some paleontologists guess that they would have helped the dinosaur get up from a resting position. It is also possible that they could have aided in holding on while Tyrannosaurus mated. (But then again, both sexes appear to have had the same arms so do with that information what you like.). I've also heard some paleontologists suggest the arms were adaptations for carrying food to safer areas away from a kill, or maybe they even carried nesting material with them?
The legs and tail of Tyrannosaurus also had to be extremely powerful. They would need to be in order to balance out how robust the front end of the animal was. Because it was so massive, Tyrannosaurus likely wasn't a very fast runner as a mature adult, probably not even being able to break twenty miles per hour at top speed, but at the same time most of the large dinosaurs it would have hunted were running about that same speed or slower, anyway. At top speed, because of its immense weight, Tyrannosaurus likely always would have had one foot on the ground, so it would have been more of a really scary power walk than a true run.
Several small patches of skin from T.rex and some of its closest relatives have been found. The largest of these is about the size of a playing card and is from the bottom of the tail. The others are from the neck and the hips. All of these skin patches show small pebbly scales. And when I say small, I mean each scale is about a millimeter in diameter, comparable to the texture of a basketball. That being said, keep in mind Tyrannosaurus was a coelurosaur, the same group of theropods that includes modern birds. In fact, coelurosaurs are known on the fossil record to possess feathers pretty much across the board. At least one example of every major branch of this group of dinosaurs has been found with them, including Tyrannosaurus' branch, called the tyrannosauroids. So did Tyrannosaurus have feathers too? Well, since these scales are so small and close together, it doesn't appear that there would have been room for feathers to have been growing from between them in life. So if Tyrannosaurus did have feathers, they were either very sparse, or concentrated to parts of the body where these skin patches were not. There are some who insist Tyrannosaurus and its closest relatives in the tyrannosaurid group (not to be confused with the slightly broader group they were nestled in where there is proof of feathers, the tyrannosaurOIDs), more likely didn't have feathers at all. However, this claim would make them an evolutionary anomaly, considering the rest of its known family tree had them.
That is all for this week! As always feel free to comment below!
References
Bakker, R.T.; Williams, M.; Currie, P.J. (1988). "Nanotyrannus, a new genus of pygmy tyrannosaur, from the latest Cretaceous of Montana". Hunteria 1 (5): 1–30.
Bates, K.T & Falkingham P.L. (2012). Estimating maximum bite performance in Tyrannosaurus rex using multi-body dynamics. Biological Letters.
Bell, P. R., Campione, N. E., Persons, W. S., Currie, P. J., Larson, P. L., Tanke, D. H., & Bakker, R. T. (2017). Tyrannosauroid integument reveals conflicting patterns of gigantism and feather evolution. Biology Letters, 13(6), 20170092.
Carpenter, Kenneth; Smith, Matt (2001). "Forelimb Osteology and Biomechanics of Tyrannosaurus rex". In Tanke, Darren; Carpenter, Kenneth. Mesozoic vertebrate life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 90–116.
Carr, T.D.; Williamson, T.E. (2004). "Diversity of late Maastrichtian Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from western North America". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 142 (4): 479–523.
Hutchinson, J.R. (2004). "Biomechanical Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis of Bipedal Running Ability. II. Extinct Taxa" (PDF). Journal of Morphology 262 (1): 441–461.
Stevens, Kent A. (June 2006). "Binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26 (2): 321–330.
Meers, Mason B. (August 2003). "Maximum bite force and prey size of Tyrannosaurus rex and their relationships to the inference of feeding behavior". Historical Biology: A Journal of Paleobiology 16 (1): 1–12.
Xu, X.; Wang, K.; Zhang, K.; Ma, Q.; Xing, L.; Sullivan, C.; Hu, D.; Cheng, S.; Wang, S. et al. (2012). "A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China" (PDF). Nature 484 (7392): 92–95.
The head of Tyrannosaurus is iconic, and easily distinguishable from those of other dinosaurs. Its general shape is somewhat rectangular, and its face, especially near the rear of the jaw, is wider than what you would see in other dinosaurs. Being wider in the back of the jaws suggests that part of the skull could withstand more force, and there were likely powerful biting muscles attached there in life. Tyrannosaurus would have had strong eyesight, complete with good depth perception, as well as an extremely good sense of smell. Its nose would have had one of the most acute senses of smell of any animal, alive or extinct, known. Scientists can tell this by looking at the negative space inside of the skull, where the brain used to be, getting an accurate shape of the brain. Thanks to this, it can be observed that the parts of the brain associated with sight and smell were proportionally large and well-developed.
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| Cast of the inside of a Tyrannosaurus' braincase on display at the Sydney Museum. The large part on the far left side is the olfactory bulbs, the part associated with sense of smell. |
The teeth of Tyrannosaurus were larger than those of any other dinosaur (some were a foot long!) and totally unique in form. Most every other kind of meat-eating dinosaur tooth was either flattened and blade-like, for slicing meat, or pointed, and cone-shaped, for holding on. The teeth of Tyrannosaurus, however, were not only curved and serrated, but also really thick. (comparable to the shape of bananas actually...pointy, serrated bananas.) This suggests that Tyrannosaurus teeth were adept at simply puncturing through whatever they bit into, including bone. Scientists estimate, thanks to computer simulations of the skull of Tyrannosaurus, that it could bite down with over 12 thousand pounds of pressure per square inch, making it the owner of the strongest jaws of any known land animal. Fossilized dung associated with T. rex even has tiny bits of crushed bone in it, proving this dinosaur had no problem crunching up and eating some bone as it ate. This makes sense when you consider the animals Tyrannosaurus was coexisting with and feeding on. As the result of one of the most extreme evolutionary arms races in natural history, dinosaurs like Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, both of which coexisted with Tyrannosaurus, were more-or-less the largest and most heavily-armored forms of each of their families. Tyrannosaurus, in turn, was the largest and most powerful of its family, the tyrannosaurids. In fact, there is direct evidence of Tyrannosaurus having fed on dinosaurs like Triceratops, despite the solid-bone frill, thanks to Tyrannosaurus teeth found embedded in Triceratops bones. Theres even more evidence of Tyrannosaurus pursuing and feeding on the duck-billed dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, including a healed bite wound. This proves that the plant-eater escaped a Tyrannosaurus attack, implying the tyrant could have been both a scavenger and an active predator.
The rest of Tyrannosaurus' body was interesting too. It is well-known for its proportionally small arms, which are actually about the same length as adult human arms! Despite being the butt of many jokes, Tyrannosaurus' arms were actually quite strong. Paleontologists estimate, by closely studying the arm bones and predicting the amount of muscle that would have attached to them in life, that each one of Tyrannosaurus' arms could lift over four hundred pounds of weight! The function of the tiny arms, which were tipped with two functional fingers and claws, is still a mystery. Some paleontologists guess that they would have helped the dinosaur get up from a resting position. It is also possible that they could have aided in holding on while Tyrannosaurus mated. (But then again, both sexes appear to have had the same arms so do with that information what you like.). I've also heard some paleontologists suggest the arms were adaptations for carrying food to safer areas away from a kill, or maybe they even carried nesting material with them?
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| Tyrannosaurus rex skeletal mount on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This mount was the first ever erected of T. rex, and actually is made up of bones from two individuals, Frankenstein style! |
The legs and tail of Tyrannosaurus also had to be extremely powerful. They would need to be in order to balance out how robust the front end of the animal was. Because it was so massive, Tyrannosaurus likely wasn't a very fast runner as a mature adult, probably not even being able to break twenty miles per hour at top speed, but at the same time most of the large dinosaurs it would have hunted were running about that same speed or slower, anyway. At top speed, because of its immense weight, Tyrannosaurus likely always would have had one foot on the ground, so it would have been more of a really scary power walk than a true run.
Interestingly enough, it is the feet of Tyrannosaurus that holds the answer to where Tyrannosaurus' group, the tyrannosaurids, fall on the dinosaur family tree. The feet of all dinosaurs each contain three bones, called metatarsals. (Humans have five metatarsals in each foot.) Most large theropod dinosaurs, like Allosaurus, for instance, have all three metatarsals roughly the same length, neatly positioned next to each other in the foot. In the more bird-like theropods (including birds), called the coelurosaurs, the middle metatarsal of each foot is a little shorter than the surrounding two, forming an upside down V shape when looking at the skeleton. Well, Tyrannosaurus feet show this same shortened middle metatarsal. At first this may seem odd that the gigantic Tyrannosaurus is more closely related to dinosaurs, like Archaeopteryx and parakeets, than to other giant carnivores, like Allosaurus or Spinosaurus, but remember that Tyrannosaurus' older relatives are smaller and smaller the farther back in time you go. Check out Eotyrannus or Guanlong for examples. So even though Tyrannosaurus was a particularly gigantic dinosaur, it was more of an exception among the many more gracile tyrannosauroids that it was most closely related to.
Paleontologists have been unearthing and studying specimens of what are believed to have been from juvenile Tyrannosaurus within recent years. What is interesting about these specimens is that they don't look like just smaller versions of the adult Tyrannosaurus. Their legs are longer proportionally, suggesting they were fast runners at that age. They also had different teeth, which were flatter and more blade-like than the giant banana-teeth of the adults. The number of teeth in their jaws is even different. This tells us that Tyrannosaurus may have been filling a different predatory ecological niche as a juvenile than as a mature adult. Perhaps the younger Tyranosaurus were better at chasing down and eating more fast moving prey like Ornithomimus or Pachycephalosaurus and then graduated to hunting more heavily armored, but slower Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, when they were bigger and stronger?
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| Tyrannosaurus skeleton foot. Notice the upside down V formed by the shorter middle foot bone. |
Paleontologists have been unearthing and studying specimens of what are believed to have been from juvenile Tyrannosaurus within recent years. What is interesting about these specimens is that they don't look like just smaller versions of the adult Tyrannosaurus. Their legs are longer proportionally, suggesting they were fast runners at that age. They also had different teeth, which were flatter and more blade-like than the giant banana-teeth of the adults. The number of teeth in their jaws is even different. This tells us that Tyrannosaurus may have been filling a different predatory ecological niche as a juvenile than as a mature adult. Perhaps the younger Tyranosaurus were better at chasing down and eating more fast moving prey like Ornithomimus or Pachycephalosaurus and then graduated to hunting more heavily armored, but slower Triceratops and Edmontosaurus, when they were bigger and stronger?
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| Juvenile Tyrannosaurus skeleton nicknamed "Jane" on display at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Illinois. Note how the skull is not as robust as an adult's and how the legs are proportionally much longer. |
Several small patches of skin from T.rex and some of its closest relatives have been found. The largest of these is about the size of a playing card and is from the bottom of the tail. The others are from the neck and the hips. All of these skin patches show small pebbly scales. And when I say small, I mean each scale is about a millimeter in diameter, comparable to the texture of a basketball. That being said, keep in mind Tyrannosaurus was a coelurosaur, the same group of theropods that includes modern birds. In fact, coelurosaurs are known on the fossil record to possess feathers pretty much across the board. At least one example of every major branch of this group of dinosaurs has been found with them, including Tyrannosaurus' branch, called the tyrannosauroids. So did Tyrannosaurus have feathers too? Well, since these scales are so small and close together, it doesn't appear that there would have been room for feathers to have been growing from between them in life. So if Tyrannosaurus did have feathers, they were either very sparse, or concentrated to parts of the body where these skin patches were not. There are some who insist Tyrannosaurus and its closest relatives in the tyrannosaurid group (not to be confused with the slightly broader group they were nestled in where there is proof of feathers, the tyrannosaurOIDs), more likely didn't have feathers at all. However, this claim would make them an evolutionary anomaly, considering the rest of its known family tree had them.
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| Photographs and diagrams showcasing the known scales of Tyrannosaurus from Bell's 2017 paper. To give you an idea as to how small these patches are, the black scale bars for the top two images is 5 centimeters. (neck and hips) The scale bars for the bottom images (tail) are 10 centimeters. |
That is all for this week! As always feel free to comment below!
References
Bakker, R.T.; Williams, M.; Currie, P.J. (1988). "Nanotyrannus, a new genus of pygmy tyrannosaur, from the latest Cretaceous of Montana". Hunteria 1 (5): 1–30.
Bates, K.T & Falkingham P.L. (2012). Estimating maximum bite performance in Tyrannosaurus rex using multi-body dynamics. Biological Letters.
Bell, P. R., Campione, N. E., Persons, W. S., Currie, P. J., Larson, P. L., Tanke, D. H., & Bakker, R. T. (2017). Tyrannosauroid integument reveals conflicting patterns of gigantism and feather evolution. Biology Letters, 13(6), 20170092.
Carpenter, Kenneth; Smith, Matt (2001). "Forelimb Osteology and Biomechanics of Tyrannosaurus rex". In Tanke, Darren; Carpenter, Kenneth. Mesozoic vertebrate life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 90–116.
Carr, T.D.; Williamson, T.E. (2004). "Diversity of late Maastrichtian Tyrannosauridae (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from western North America". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 142 (4): 479–523.
Hutchinson, J.R. (2004). "Biomechanical Modeling and Sensitivity Analysis of Bipedal Running Ability. II. Extinct Taxa" (PDF). Journal of Morphology 262 (1): 441–461.
Stevens, Kent A. (June 2006). "Binocular vision in theropod dinosaurs". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26 (2): 321–330.
Meers, Mason B. (August 2003). "Maximum bite force and prey size of Tyrannosaurus rex and their relationships to the inference of feeding behavior". Historical Biology: A Journal of Paleobiology 16 (1): 1–12.
Xu, X.; Wang, K.; Zhang, K.; Ma, Q.; Xing, L.; Sullivan, C.; Hu, D.; Cheng, S.; Wang, S. et al. (2012). "A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China" (PDF). Nature 484 (7392): 92–95.
