Technology
More than 2.5BILLION T-Rexes walked Earth before dinosaurs died out – and 20,000 lived at any one time
BILLIONS of T-Rexes roamed the earth, new research has shown.
The giant meat-eating dinosaur – made famous in Jurassic Park – dominated the world during the Cretaceous period.
Billions of T-Rexes roamed the Earth before the dinosaurs died out[/caption]
Now scientists have calculated that 2.5billion T-Rexes lived and died during their reign, in a new study published in the journal Science.
Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte, author of bestselling The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, said: “If one bus-sized T-Rex biting down on you with the force of pickup truck isn’t terrifying enough, imagine that about 20,000 of them were probably out there stalking at any given time.
“That’s more or less the number of lions that live in Africa right now. Multiply that by a few million years, and there were probably billions of T-Rexes that once lived, which is horrifying.
“It certainly makes me thankful that I live in the UK in 2021 rather than western North America 66 million years ago.
As many as 20,000 of the meat-eating beasts were alive at any one time[/caption]
“It also puts into perspective just how rare good T-Rex fossils are – only a few dozen decent skeletons have been found. We must cherish the ones we have in museums now, and keep going out to try to find more.”
The research used fossil records, population data of living animals and computer simulations to estimate how many T-Rexes there were.
Scientists calculated that each generation of T-Rex lasted about 19 years and that the average population density was about one dinosaur for every 38 square miles.
They also estimated that T-Rex, which had bone-crunching jaws and powerful hind legs for pursuing prey, had energy requirements halfway between those of a lion and a Komodo dragon, the largest lizard on Earth.
Prof Brusatte said: “Figuring out the demographics of dinosaurs is like trying to do a UK-wide census by surveying only a few dozen households at random places around the country.
“But this a fun study that takes the fossils and the numbers as far as we can, and makes reasonable predictions.”
Researcher Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology, said: “Our knowledge of T-Rex has expanded so greatly in the past few decades thanks to more fossils, more ways of analysing them and better ways of integrating information.
“It’s surprising how much we actually know about them and, from that, how much more we can compute.”
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In other news, a sharp-toothed, tree-climbing dinosaur discovered by researchers has been dubbed the “Monkeydactyl”.
An unearthed stone slab dating back to the Bronze Age may represent Europe’s oldest map.
And, a new study claims to finally provide some answers to why a 17th century bishop was buried with a foetus.
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