Misconceptions About T. Rex

You may be no expert, but you probably know a thing or two about dinosaurs. Any four-year-old can identify a few dinosaurs and give you a few facts about them. The problem, though, is that almost everything you learned in school about dinosaurs is completely false. Your perceptions of Tyrannosaurus rex, particularly as seen in films like Jurassic Park and the Land Before Time, are likely to be incorrect.

For many of us, the Tyrannosaurus rex is the absolute epitome of terror. We picture it as a massive, snarling, soulless beast with huge fangs, fast-moving legs, and the capacity to rip its prey to shreds without an ounce of hesitation. These misconceptions are pervasive and exist throughout the world. T-rex personifies everything we fear about the planet's turbulent past.

While you definitely wouldn't want to bump into T. rex in the woods somewhere, it wasn't the terrifying monster that many films and books portray it as. For one thing, T. rex was no more "evil" than a lion or a bear. It was made to eat meat, so meat it ate. Prehistoric reptiles didn't have the complex emotions to sit around worrying about their diets' impacts on the things they eat.

And, as far as science can tell T-rex was actually slow, clumsy, and didn't do a whole lot of killing.

A T- rex could not run at all-- it could walk at top speeds rarely exceeding twenty miles per hour, but a sprint would have been dangerous and impractical. At T-rex's weight and height, a mid-hunt fall could have easily been fatal, and nature didn't equip it with forearms to help it balance or to catch its weight in the event of a collapse. Although I wouldn't volunteer to be chased by a dinosaur, most top-shape human runners would actually stand a decent chance of outpacing one.

Although the T-rex probably did hunt its prey if it happened to encounter a sick, slow or injured animal, a large portion of its diet was probably the rotting remains of already-dead animals. Modern science has revealed, based on the T-rex's body and our current understanding of prehistoric ecosystems, that the T-rex was more of a scavenger than a predator. Like hyenas, they probably ate carrion for about 50% of their diet, and hunted sick and weak animals for the other 50%.

Compared to other gigantic predators, T-rex also falls short as the true King of the Dinosaurs. Gigantoraurus of South America, which predated T-rex by about 50 million years, was both larger and far more terrifying than his better-known North American counterpart. Gigantosaurus was two feet taller than T-rex and had sharper, knife-like, serrated teeth. It was also capable of running at faster speeds.

Misconceptions about T-rex are rampant because we envision almost all prehistoric animals as terrifying, soulless beasts. It's hard to imagine a world of balance and order before humans, since we tend to view ourselves as the final product of a formerly chaotic ecosystem. But dinosaurs actually lived in a controlled, balanced and ultimately fair ecosystem for the entirety of the time in which they dominated the planet. No dinosaur, including the misunderstood T-rex, was any more of a monster than any modern species.

Sources Used:

Times Online
Dinosaur World