Sinister sound of Tyrannosaurus Rex heard for first time in 66 million years

 Sarah Knapton, science editor 

9 DECEMBER 2017 • 7:00PM

The fearsome roar of Tyrannosaurus Rex as portrayed in film has left many a cinema-goer quaking in their seat.

But new research suggests the king of the dinosaurs made a far more sinister sound.

For a new BBC documentary, naturalist Chris Packham visited Julia Clarke, professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Texas, to test out a the theory that dinosaurs actually sounded more like birds and reptiles, than today’s predatory mammals.

“The most chilling noises in the natural world today come from predators, the howl of the wolf, the roar of the tiger, but experts now doubt that T-Rex sounded anything like them,” said Packham.

Dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds and are closely related to alligators and crocodiles, so Prof Clarke used the sound of the Eurasian bittern, which makes an unearthly booming call, and the vocalisations of Chinese crocodiles to estimate the noise T-Rex would have made.

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So Long, Sue! Famed T. Rex Makes Way for Bigger Beast

By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | August 31, 2017 11:52am ET

After spending nearly 18 years in the Field Museum's great hall in Chicago, Sue — the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered — will move to an exhibit upstairs, making room for the world's largest known dinosaur: a titanosaur.

Once upstairs, Sue will be reconnected with its gastralia, a unit of rib-like bones that stretch across the belly. The dinosaur will also have adjustments made to its furcular (wishbone), arms and legs, said Bill Simpson, the collections manager of fossil vertebrates at the Field Museum.

"The gastralia [addition] is the biggest thing, but we're also making a few other corrections to Sue," Simpson told Live Science. 

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T. Rex skin was covered in scales, not feathers

June 7, 2017

by Chuck Bednar 

Although its ancestors probably did have feathers, as recent research has suggested, a new study published this week in the journal Biology Letters has concluded that the Tyrannosaurus rex did not, and was in fact covered in scales similar to those found on modern-day lizards.

In the new study, Phil R. Bell, a paleontologist from the University of New England in Australia, and his colleagues analyzed skin impressions from a T.rex skeleton found in Montana, as well as from four related species (Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Gorgosaurus and Tarbosaurus) late in the tyrannosaur’s history, according to BBC News and the Washington Post.

While recent studies had found that two tyrannosauroids that preceded the T. rex by around 50 million years (Dilong and Yutyrannus) were covered in feathers, the new analysis of the T. rex itself revealed that the creature’s abdomen, chest, pelvis, neck, and tail were covered exclusively in scales. If it had feathers, they were limited to its back or spines, the authors said.

“With all the hype about feathered theropods, it's easy to forget that actually, most dinosaurs had scaly, reptilian-like skin,” Bell told the Post via email. However, he noted, the new study “shows without question that  had scaly skin.” The reasons for this trait remain a mystery, although size may have played a role.

“Big animals have trouble shedding excess heat, so being covered in feathers is not a good idea unless you live somewhere cold,” he explained. However, while Dilong was much smaller than the T. rex, Yutyrannus was closer to the size of the larger dinosaur, lived in similar climates and still had feathers. “So what's the reason for this difference? We really don't know.”

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Secrets behind T. rex's bone crushing bites: T. rex could crush with 8,000 pound bite forces

Date: May 17, 2017

Source: Florida State University

The giant Tyrannosaurus rex pulverized bones by biting down with forces equaling the weight of three small cars while simultaneously generating world record tooth pressures, according to a new study by a Florida State University-Oklahoma State University research team.

In a study published today in Scientific Reports, Florida State University Professor of Biological Science Gregory Erickson and Paul Gignac, assistant professor of Anatomy and Vertebrate Paleontology at Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, explain how T. rex could pulverize bones -- a capacity known as extreme osteophagy that is typically seen in living carnivorous mammals such as wolves and hyenas, but not reptiles whose teeth do not allow for chewing up bones.

Erickson and Gignac found that this prehistoric reptile could chow down with nearly 8,000 pounds of force, which is more than two times greater than the bite force of the largest living crocodiles -- today's bite force champions. At the same time, their long, conical teeth generated an astounding 431,000 pounds per square inch of bone-failing tooth pressures.

This allowed T. rex to drive open cracks in bone during repetitive, mammal-like biting and produce high-pressure fracture arcades, leading to a catastrophic explosion of some bones.

"It was this bone-crunching acumen that helped T. rex to more fully exploit the carcasses of large horned-dinosaurs and duck-billed hadrosaurids whose bones, rich in mineral salts and marrow, were unavailable to smaller, less equipped carnivorous dinosaurs," Gignac said.

The researchers built on their extensive experience testing and modeling how the musculature of living crocodilians, which are close relatives of dinosaurs, contribute to bite forces. They then compared the results with birds, which are modern-day dinosaurs, and generated a model for T. rex.

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T. Rex with Well-Preserved Skull Found in Montana's Hell Creek Formation

By Richard Farrell, Discovery News | August 19, 2016 07:55am ET

There's a new Tyrannosaurus rex fossil on the block, with a cute nickname and about 20 percent of its former body intact, including a well-preserved skull.

The T. rex was found by paleontologists from Burke Museum and the University of Washington (UW) in Montana's famous dinosaur-fossil haven, the Hell Creek Formation. It has been dubbed the "Tufts-Love Rex," in honor of the volunteer paleontologists who first noticed bones jutting out of a hillside: Burke Museum's Jason Love and Luke Tufts.

The Burke and UW researchers say they were able to unearth roughly a fifth of the animal, including ribs, hips, jaw bones and vertebrae. (They'll search for more pieces of the iconic beast next summer.)

But the centerpiece of the find is the skull, which is about 4 feet long. So far, the scientists can see the right side of the skull -- from base to snout, including teeth -- and they think it's likely the left side, now trapped in rock, is intact too. (They'll begin the painstaking process of removing the remaining rock in October.)

The researchers estimate Tufts-Love lived about 66.3 million years ago, making its living toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, not geologically long before a mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs. They also reckon, due to skull size, that the T. rex was 15 years old when it died, putting it about halfway through a typical T. rex lifespan.

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