PREHISTORIC

Tyrannosaurus Rex

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

There's perhaps no dinosaur that's more famous, or rather, infamous, than this colossus. It's one of the main stars of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies. But what was the king of the dinosaurs really like?

For the record, Tyrannosaurus Rex really was a powerful ruler than ruled over a vast kingdom. The bulk of T. Rex fossils have been found in the Hell Creek Formation in the USA, which spans over Montana, North & South Dakota, and a little bit of Wyoming. But T. Rex was in no way limited to just the Hell Creek Formation - no, it's fossils have also been found in the Lance Formation in Wyoming, the Laramie Formation in Colorado, the Scollard Formation in Alberta, Canada, the Frenchman Formation in Saskatchewan, Canada, all the way down to the Javelina Formation in Texas. This was an apex predator with a very wide range. 

The vast expanse of the distribution of Tyrannosaurus indicated how successful it was as an apex predator; a fairly accurate testament of its power and ferocity as a hypercarnivore. 

What did T. Rex look like? Did it have feathers?

My answer would be - Yes, and No. After reading articles and forums, I have decided that T. Rex would have changed its appearance based on its environment - it may have had feathers in certain parts of its range, and it may have lacked feathers in other parts of its range. In the Hell Creek Formation, where the population of T. Rex was perhaps most densely concentrated, the climate was rather warm and humid, and having feathers would simply not be an option, or the dinosaur would overheat. If they did have feathers, it would probably be only limited to their backs, and it would be a very sparse coat of feathers.

However, T. Rex didn't only live in the Hell Creek Formation. Moving further away from the equator, where the climate became colder and drier - such as in Canadian countries, Tyrannosaurus would have perhaps developed thicker, denser coats of feathers to keep warm; if that was the case, they would look quite different from their cousins living further south. 

In summary, Tyrannosaurus wouldn't have looked far from the ones that you see in Jurassic Park and Jurassic World. But in colder parts of its range, it also would've closely resembled the T. Rex that you see in the picture above. 

WAIT! But before you go accepting your JP/JW T. Rex as accurate...

It's not. For one, in real life, Tyrannosaurus Rex would have been far more robust and muscular than your beloved 'Rexy'. It would have been far more 'chubby'. The T. Rex that you see in JP & JW would've looked positively skinny and gracile compared to this massively bulky, ridiculously buff overlord of a tyrannosaur. 

This is perhaps one of the many things that sets T. Rex apart from all other meat-eating dinosaurs. So many other meat-eating dinosaurs have been found that are longer and taller than T. Rex - like Giganotosaurus from South America, and Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus from Africa. But as huge as they were, in a fight a T. Rex would beat any of them hands down. Why? Because the T. Rex wasn't just big; it was HEAVILY MUSCULAR. It was the Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, the Chris Hemsworth, the John Cena and Arnold Schwarzenegger of the dinosaur world. 

And who could forget T. Rex's bone-crushing bite? It has been scientifically calculated that Tyrannosaurus Rex could bite down with a force of, maximally, 6.5 metric tons (7.1 tons) of force - just shy of 64,000 Newtons. That is heavier than having an adult African elephant sit on you. 

And that's just his jaws; remember that T. Rex had colossal, banana-shaped teeth that were considerably thicker and stronger than the teeth of other carnivorous dinosaurs, like Allosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. While these carnivores generally had blade-like teeth that were suited for slashing and tearing through flesh, Tyrannosaurus had teeth that were designed, as Robert Bakker put it, 'to crush'. Thomas Holtz Jr. called it 'pulverizing teeth' that could 'strip flesh, shatter bone, and are anchored by extremely deep roots'. And its teeth were MASSIVE; the biggest tooth ever found was estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters long including its root when the animal was alive. 

With these jaws and teeth, nothing survived the bite of T. Rex. Bones wouldn't just break; they would EXPLODE when Tyrannosaurus Rex crunched down on it. Paleontologists have calculated that, when taking the bite force exerted through its teeth into consideration, T. Rex would have exerted an overwhelming, mind-boggling bite force of 431,000 pounds per square inch - or more than 30,000 kilograms per square centimeter. And perhaps this is what makes T. Rex so infamous even compared to other meat-eating dinosaurs that rivalled or exceeded it in size; it wasn't just big, it was also arguably the most powerful dinosaurian hypercarnivore ever to walk the earth. 

And perhaps this is also the reason why T. Rex was so successful as an apex predator; with an indescribably powerful chomp like this, any large dinosaur in its range (and there were many species of huge plant-eating dinosaurs) could potentially be on its menu. Hadrosaurs like Edmontosaurus annectens, ceratopsians like Triceratops, Bravoceratops and Torosaurus were its most common prey, but even for heavily armoured thyreophans like Ankylosaurus, Edmontonia and Denversaurus, their armour wouldn't stand a chance against T. Rex's bite. Even the titanic sauropod Alamosaurus, for all its size and it's legs which were like huge pillars of flesh and bone, would have needed to beware Tyrannosaurus getting its jaws around them. 

All in all, as iconic as the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the Jurassic Park & World franchise was and still is, the real life T. Rex is, by far, a vastly more impressive animal.