15 Discoveries That Will Break Your 'Jurassic Park'-Loving Heart
In recent years, paleontologists have been revising the scientific consensus about how T. rex looked, sounded, and ate.
"Everyone's preconceived ideas of what T. rex acted like and looked like are going to be heavily modified," Mark Norell, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, told Business Insider. The museum just opened an exhibit devoted to the dino, called "T. rex: The Ultimate Predator."
The exhibit showcases the latest research on the prehistoric animal. And as it turns out, these predators started their lives as fuzzy, turkey-sized hatchlings. They also had excellent vision, with forward-facing eyes like a hawk for superior depth perception. And T. rexes couldn't run — instead, they walked at impressive speeds of up to 25 mph.
But to be fair to Steven Spielberg, only seven or eight T. rex skeletons existed in the fossil record when his classic movie was produced in 1993. Since then, a dozen more skeletons have been discovered, and those bones have changed scientists' understanding of the creatures.
Here's what the T. rex was really like when it hunted 66 million years ago, according to the experts at the AMNH.
1. The first T. rex skeleton was discovered in 1902 by Barnum Brown, a paleontologist with the AMNH.
Today, the institution boasts one of the few original T. rex skeletons on display.
Tyrannosaurus rex — from the Greek words for "tyrant" and "lizard" and the Latin word for "king" — lived between 68 million and 66 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period (just before the asteroid impact that ended the era of the dinosaurs).
2. The T. rex rocked a mullet of feathers on its head and neck, and some on its tail too.
Feathers are rarely preserved in the fossil record, so they haven't been found on a T. rex specimen. But other dinosaur fossils, including other tyrannosaur species and their relatives, do have preserved feathers.
That means paleontologists can "safely assume" T. rex had feathers as well, Norell said.
Though adult T. rexes were mostly covered in scales, scientists think they had patches of feathers on attention-getting areas like the head and tail.
3. T. rex hatchlings looked more like fluffy turkeys than terrifying predators.
T. rex hatchlings were covered in peach fuzz, much like a duckling. As they aged, they lost most of their feathers, keeping just the ones on the head, neck, and tail.
Most hatchlings didn't survive past infancy. A baby T. rex had a more than 60% chance of succumbing to predators, disease, accidents, or starvation during its first year of life.
4. T. rex had a fairly short lifespan by human standards. No known T. rex lived past the age of 30.
The T. rex was like "the James Dean of the dinosaurs," said Gregory Erickson, a paleontologist from Florida State University who consulted on the museum's new exhibit.
The Hollywood actor, often connected to the famous quote "Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse," died in a fiery car crash at the age of 24. T. rexes, similarly, were spectacular but died quite young.
Paleontologists can estimate the age that a dinosaur was when it died by analyzing its fossilized bones, which have growth rings that correspond to its age, much like trees. Experts can count the number of rings to determine its age, as well as compare the spaces between rings to find out how fast the dinosaur was growing at different ages.
5. A T. rex grew from a tiny hatchling to a 9-ton predator in about 18 to 20 years, gaining an unbelievable 1,700 pounds per year.
A full-grown Tyrannosaurus rex weighed about 6 to 9 tons. It stood about 12 to 13 feet tall at the hip and was about 40 to 43 feet long.
6. The "king of the dinosaurs" evolved from a larger group of tyrannosaurs that were smaller and faster.
While the T. rex emerged about 68 million years ago, its tyrannosaur ancestors were 100 million years older than that.
The tyrannosauroidea superfamily consists of two dozen species spanning more than 100 million years of evolution.
7. That evolutionary lineage might ex