Aside from being the most dangerous predator of all time tyrannosaurus rex had many other interesting attributes that your kids will enjoy learning about:

Facts about Tyrannosaurus Rex

Things you might not know about the most famous predator of all time:

• A T-Rex’s arms might have been dinky, but scientists say that those arms could curl as much as 400 pounds!
• Tyrannosaurus Rex grew to its full size in about 18 years…sort of like people.
• Paleontologist Barnum Brown excavated the first documented T-Rex in Montana in 1902.
• T-Rex enjoyed its status as top predator for about 20 million years at the end of the Cretaceous, the last years of the dinosaurs.

 

The Touchy-Feely Tyrannosaur
We tend to think to tyrannosaurs as fierce and feisty. But it turns out these creatures may have had a softer side as well. A 2017 study of the fossilized remains of Daspletosaurus Horneri, a relative of the mighty T-Rex, shows that the dinosaur had a particularly sensitive snout. Much like modern crocodiles, their facial bones featured many little holes that allowed nerves to pass through to the skin, suggesting their face was packed full of highly-sensitive scales. Scientists think this would have helped the dinosaur manipulate objects, and they probably used it to nuzzle their young in a gentle and caring way. Maybe the mighty Tyrannosaur wasn’t such a tough guy after all!

Related activity: For a fun group time session, have kids imagine what it would be like to nuzzle a tyrannosaur, and share their musings with the class.

 

T-Rex versus Spinosaurs

• Don’t bother me, I won’t bother you: T-Rex lived at a time when another very large predator was around: Spinosaurus. Yet DNA tests on fossilized stomach contents for spinosaurus shows that Spinosaurs spent almost all their time in water, which solves the problem of how the two lived at the same time and in the same places without constantly fighting with each other: they avoided one another. Tyrannosaurus pretty much stuck to land, and spinosaurus to the water.

 

Ancestors to Tyrannosaurus Rex

• In 2009, archaeologists discovered a newly described tyrannosaur species that was small enough to have looked humans in the eye. Xiongguanlong baimoensis lived in what is now China between 110 million and 120 million years ago. Remains of the creature suggest that it weighed about 270 kilograms and was roughly 2 meters tall when measured at the hips. The species falls within a gap in the fossil record between the smaller, older Dilong paradoxus (T-Rex’s great, great, great grandpa) and the more recent Tyrannosaurus Rex that we’ve all come to know and love.

 

For discussion: If you found yourself looking into the eyes of a T-Rex, what would you do? What would you say?

• Yet another fossil of a T-Rex ancestor, Raptorex Kriegsteini, or Raptorex as scientists have dubbed it, also lived in what is now China. It lived around 125 million years ago, and looks like a T-Rex in miniature. At around one-fifth the length of T-Rex and a mere 1/100th of its overall size, this 8-foot long raptorex roamed the earth around 40 million years before T-Rex.