Tyrannosaurus rex
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Tyrannosaurus rex (King Tyrant Lizard), known as "The King of the Dinosaurs," was one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs to have ever walked the earth during the Late Cretaceous Period about 70-65 million years ago in what is now North America. Tyrannosaurus is also the most famous of all dinosaurs appearing in so many forms of media more than any other dinosaur ever known whether in the movies or in the comics.
This dinosaur, often just called T. rex, stood approximately 15 feet tall at the hips, measured about 40 feet long, and weighed about 4-8 tons. It had a huge head roughly five feet in length, containing rows of sharp, serrated teeth measuring up to between 6 to 13 inches long. Its jaws were so powerful that it could even crush through bone as well as tear up skin and flesh. With 2 huge powerful legs each with bird-like feet with toes each tipped with menacing sharp claws and eyes that see forward to help zero in on its prey, Tyrannosaurus was a powerful predator to be reckoned with. However, its arms were puny with 2 fingers on each hand compared to its huge muscular legs and powerful bone crushing jaws. Scientists are not sure how Tyrannosaurus used its tiny arms; some have theorised it was used to steady it while rising from a resting position. Others think their small size may have been to make the torso less heavy. Each arm is as long as a man's arm and are much too small to reach its mouth. Yet, amazingly they are muscular despite being small in size, Tyrannosaurus could have used its arms to pin meat against its body while dragging a carcass, to prevent it from awkwardly swinging around.
In recent years, Tyrannosaurus has been a subject of debating among the scientists started on by paleontologist Jack Horner who believes Tyrannosaurus was just a scavenger like a giant terrestrial vulture, eating only carcasses of dinosaurs that have already died. This is due to Tyrannosaurus slow, bulky locomotion, its huge olfactory glands that increased its sense of smell, and the fact that the small arms supposedly could not have been used to catch prey. Horner backed up his claim when he found a Triceratops bone with Tyrannosaurus teeth marks cut deep in it; saying that this bone was bitten by T. rex a while after the Triceratops died. This concept is nothing new. Years ago a paleontologist named Lawrence Lambe first invented the concept of a tyrannosaur being just a scavenger when studying fossilized remains of an Albertosaurus, a relative of Tyrannosaurus that lived around 70 million years ago, also in North America.
However, most scientists reject this concept on the count of T. rex having eyes that see forward, bone crushing jaws, and the fact that most carnivores hunt in addition to scavenging. Evidence toward the concept of T. rex being a predator is the Denver Museum of Nature and Science's own large skeletal mount of Edmontosaurus, a duckbill Hadrosaur with evidence of a run-in attack by a T. rex who took a bite of the top part of the tail. Fortunately, the Edmontosaurus escaped being a meal, and its wound has eventually healed. So, it is most likely that T. rex was both a predator and a scavenger just like most predators are, including lions and hyenas.
Tyrannosaurus was first discovered in Hell Creek, Montana in 1902 by the paleontolgist Barnum Brown, who unearthed the fossil and took it to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where another paleontologist, Henry Fairfield Osborn named it Tyrannosaurus rex and described this special dinosaur calling it "the pinnacle of dinosaur evolution."
However it would be years down the road when in 1990, paleontologist Susan Hendrickson while walking her dog made a discovery of a lifetime - a Tyrannosaurus fossil that turned out to be the world's most complete T. rex fossil ever discovered. It is nicknamed "Sue" after its discoverer. The fossil is 90% complete, unlike the other T. rex fossils that are about 60% complete or less. So, it is a highly spectacular find. Unfortunately, the authorities broke in and seized the fossil because the fossil was found on Native American Sioux Indian property and the Sioux claimed they have the right to own the fossil since it was found on Native American soil. Court battles over ownership dragged on for 5 years until finally the judge ruled that the fossil officially belonged to the man who owned the property where it was discovered. A short time later the man decided to auction the fossil off and it was eventually sold to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL, for over $8,000,000. After much cleaning, prepwork, and mounting, Sue the Tyrannosaurus fossil was finally unveiled before a large crowd of people in May of 2000, 10 years after its discovery in Montana.
Before the discovery of Sue, another T. rex fossil was discovered in 1988 by Kathy Wankel which created big excitement among scientists when they found that the Tyrannosaurus fossil has forelimbs perserved in the fossil; showing them that Tyrannosaurus had 2 fingers on each hand just like its cousin Albertosaurus.
Another Tyrannosaurus fossil, nicknamed "Stan" after its discoverer, was found to have lots of broken bones in many places that had been inflicted and healed over certain periods of time, indicating that over the years in its life, this Tyrannosaurus had many run-ins with a rival of its kind that inflicted this dinosaur with terrible bone crushing bites in various places throughout it's body.
Then in March 2005, a Tyrannosaurus thigh bone was reluctantly broken apart to make it lighter for a vehicle to carry only to reveal a soft tissue that bears a striking resemblance to an ostrich, which turns out to be possibly a medullary bone which is part of the dinosaur's reproductive system. It was discovered by paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, who is a subject of flammatory attacks by young earth creationists who demanded Mary to give in to their views which she won't do because she does not want to believe in a lying, deceiving God who made everything young and made it to look deceivingly old and falsely claim that this discovery "confirms" the notion of dinosaurs living very recently, only thousands of years ago. The fossil actually dates back to 68 million years ago..
