Currents Events 2 - T-Rex was even bigger than we thought!

Published on October 14th, 2011
By: Meera Dolasia
Original title: OMG! The Mighty T-Rex May Have Been Even Bigger Than We Thought
Link: http://www.dogonews.com/2011/10/14/omg-the-mighty-t-rex-may-have-been-even-bigger-than-we-thought

Out of all the dinosaurs that existed on our planet long ago, Tyrannosaurus Rex, or T-Rex for short, was probably the fiercest and most dangerous. However, new studies have shown that scientists have miscalculated the actual size of T-Rex, and that this dinosaur was 30% bigger than originally thought! The new measurements of T-Rex’s skeleton were discovered by a group of British and American paleontologists, who used five T-Rex fossils to make scale models, and conduct their research.  

SUE is the most well-preserved fossil of T-Rex ever found. By using the forensic scanners, scientists found that just the skull of T-Rex is 3.3 feet wide and about 5 feet long!  The team also tried to accurately measure the body volume of T-Rex, by separating the different parts of the skeleton (the head, tail, etc.), and skin-wrapping them. Before the detailed tests, it was thought that this giant dinosaur weighed around five tons. New estimates say that the minimum weight was nine tons!

 Once scientists figured out the weight of T-Rex, they also tried to estimate how these massive beings grew. When they were born, they probably weighed around 11 pounds. They probably hit two major growth spurts; one when they were 10 years old, and one when they were 17 years old. It is possible that during those two periods of their lives, T-Rex’s gained around 3, 950 pounds. Most of the weight that made the T-Rex so big was in the torso, while the legs remained very short throughout their life.