Tyrannosaurids, the family of dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus rex, have been known from North America and Asia for more than a century, but many details of their evolutionary history remain unclear.
Many of the characteristics of this iconic dinosaur come from Hollywood, which has disguised it as a fearsome predator, which is also based on many scientific studies.
One of them is from the University of Maryland, published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, a study that further cemented its fearsome reputation: “Medium-sized predators virtually disappeared when Tyrannosaurus rex and its close relatives dominated Went.” ,
The study noted that in some regions of Earth, mainly central Asia and western North America, juvenile tyrannosaurs took over to fill the ecological niche occupied by other carnivores.
But new scientific evidence is proving his bloodthirsty resume wrong. Although paleontologists agree that this was a great dinosaur, there are a number of features that soften some of the bleakness of its history. For example, his teeth are not the giant daggers of the animal from Jurassic Park. He actually looks quite young, and weirdly, he has plump lips.
According to a study published in Science, a team of paleontologists from several institutions believes that carnivorous dinosaurs like T. Rex and Allosaurus had fleshy lips that covered their teeth like modern lizards. The hypothesis changes both the public image of dinosaurs and the way paleontologists study the feeding patterns of these fearsome lizards.
In fact, paleontologists have discovered new species that dwarf popular dinosaurs. He recently discovered the fossil of a strange creature, which he defined as a mixture of a hornbill bird with a lemur. They named it Quetzalcoatlus, a giant pterosaur, another fearsome Jurassic predator, at six meters tall (the size of a giraffe), slightly larger than T. rex.
This animal can take out the eyes of T. rex with its almost 2 meter long beak. In a shocking turn of events, the iconic Tyrannosaurus rex, whose name literally comes from the Greek word for ‘absolute ruler’, has retreated.
These findings have been presented by Paleontologist Darren Naish in the second season of Prehistoric Planet, an Apple TV+ series.
In an interview with the Science Focus portal, Naish, chief paleontology consultant for the series, provided details of T. rex and the series. “Everyone, of course, always thought of Tyrannosaurus rex as the ultimate predator: an unstoppable killing machine that sliced other things in half,” he said.
“But no predator behaves this way. Each predator acts to minimize the risk of injury and death for itself.
“There are cases where they will be very conservative in their behavior, almost cowardly. Because it is not worth stabbing in the eye.”
