New T-Rex Species Unearthed in China

If Man is the dominant species on Earth, it may be only because of the opportune meeting of a six mile wide hunk of meteor and the Yucatan Peninsula 65.5 million years ago. To add to the mix now China has found another species of Tyrannosaur buried in what is described as "fossil quarry" that holds "one of the largest concentrations of dinosaur bones in the world."

T-Rex is widely considered the largest meat eating critter to ever roam the planet's surface. Size quibble's aside, even a small dino would have been more than Man could have handled. The real Velociraptor, a creature more turkey sized than Man sized as the Jurassic Park movies showed, would have easily been able to kill a human, so with 6 ton T-Rex wandering around Man stood no chance at all. Add in all the variations on the theropod, meaning beast footed or more commonly known as "two-legged" bipedal meat eating dinosaurs and it's no wonder Man stood no chance of survival if dinosaurs had not been struck down in the prime of their terrifying lives.

Would Man Have Had To Fear T-Rex?

The science indicates indeed so. According to Live Science, the controversy over T-Rex being an active carnivore versus the of late theory they were mostly scavengers, is somewhat settled. Charles O. Choi writes "nearly half of all the herbivore prey likely eaten by T.rex weighed between 120 and 190 pounds." Gee, sounds like the size of the average man and the average woman, no? And while T-Rex was more than likely a opportunistic scavenger too, these suckers could basically run down and kill most anything they wished.

Keep in mind many modern day predatory animals will hunt as well as scavenge their meals. Even our domestic canines that we love and feed will often hunt and kill small prey and how many of us have seen our dog with a dead bird in their mouth or some such? It seems many carnivores are not so picky, and in fact, gross as it seems to me, there are people who take fresh road kill and eat it.

T-Rex Was An Opportune Eater

There is some argument in the field of study that T-Rex was too big, lumbering, had no real arms to speak of, etc., so he could not have successfully hunted down his prey. That seems an egg-headed argument to me. T-Rex could eat whomever he wanted. They were capable of running at speeds of 30 miles per hour or so, and as they were so large and as each step covered a massive area, while they would expend great energy running, it was relative. A smaller prey species running for its life had to use a lot of energy to get away from a 35 foot long mouth full of teeth chomping at their heels.

In my mind the final nail in the coffin of "T-Rex was a scavenger" argument is the predator-prey model of currently living species of animals we see today. Most carnivores will eat whatever they come across and I fail to see how that would not have been the case 65 million years ago.

Add in that except for other dinos there were really no large mammals as we know them today. It took the demise of the dinosaurs for mammals to rise to the top of the terrestrial ladder. Science indicates that the only mammals that survived the asteroid strike were small ones...nothing larger than a domestic house cat survived the event. It took the end of the mega fauna of dinosauria for mammals to rise to prominence.

So welcome to the light of day for the new T-Rex species. The Chinese find only adds to the collective diversity of this species and to dinosaurs in general. And it adds yet one more creature that would have loved to eat a tasty dude named Gork for their next meal...like the advertisement says "Beef. It's what's for dinner!" Of perhaps more accurately, for the hungry T-Rex it was "Caveman! It's what's for dinner!"