Tyrannosaurus rex
tie-RAN-oh-SAWR-us REX
- featured
The most famous of all dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex enjoys a fearsome reputation around the world thanks to its size, power and aggression – a status borne out by its name, which translates to ‘King of the tyrant lizards’. At around 13.5m in length and over eight tons in weight, Tyrannosaurus rex was the apex predator of its time, with the most powerful jaw known to science and rows of large, serrated teeth.
Discovery
American geologist Arthur Lakes lays claim to the discovery of Tyrannosaurus rex, when he unearthed multiple teeth in the Morrison Formation, Colorado. The teeth were initially believed to belong to Ornithomimus, but the subsequent discovery of a partial skeleton by Barnum Brown while investigating a site in Wyoming in 1900 was classified as Tyrannosaurus rex five years later, with Lakes’ find later attributed to the same genus.
Palaeoecology
Tyrannosaurus rex roamed the western side of North America during the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 66-68m years ago. As the apex predator of this period, it fed on a wide array of prey including hadrosaurs, ankylosaurs and even large sauropods, using its excellent hearing and heightened sense of smell to hunt down targets.
Information
- Era
- Late Cretaceous
- Family
- Tyrannosauridae
- Genus
- Tyrannosaurus
- Height
- 5.2M
- Length
- 13.5M
- Weight
- 8.4T
- Diet
- Carnivore, Live Prey
- Egg batch size
- 1 - 2
