Double blow for T.rex

Galvasean

Tyrannosaurus has officially lost the title of 'strongest bite ever' to the megalodon.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080805-shark-bite.html

article wrote:

A great white is about the size of the clasper, or penis, of a male megalodon," said Peter Klimley a shark expert at the University of California at Davis, who was not involved with the current research.

In what is considered to be a bad week for mister Rex research also shows that duck billed dinosaurs grew much faster than tyrannosaurs.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080806-duck-billed-growth.html

Dave!

Poor T-Rex

AtomicHorror

Galvasean wrote: »

Tyrannosaurus has officially lost the title of 'strongest bite ever' to the megalodon.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080805-shark-bite.html



In what is considered to be a bad week for mister Rex research also shows that duck billed dinosaurs grew much faster than tyrannosaurs.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080806-duck-billed-growth.html

D'oh.

WindSock

Why the tiny arms? Surely they are completely impractical?

Galvasean

WindSock wrote: »

Why the tiny arms? Surely they are completely impractical?

Well, the main reason why it had such small arms is simply so it could have a larger mouth. Larger mouth = better at catching and killing prey. By the Cretaceous period pretty much all of the large carnivorous theropods had reduced the size of their arms in favour of bigger mouths (since they were no longer using their arms to grapple with prey). Tyrannosaurus is one extreme example of this.

That's not to say the arms were totally without use. Among several theories it has been proposed that a male T.rex might have used his arms for steadying himself on a mate during mating and/or posibly even using them to scratch at the females back in an attempt to arouse her.

Galvasean

Bit more on the arms of T.rex:
http://www.paleontologynews.com/link.asp?ID=333392&Title=Armed%20and%20Dangerous

dlofnep

We all know the real reason for small arms was so he could scratch his belly!

Megaldon was huge. I wouldn't doubt for one moment that his bite was stronger, but I'd imagine some form of prehistoric croc's bite might even be stronger than that as sharks don't tend tobite down in the same way crocs do, but rather sever.

marco_polo

I'll have to watch Jurassic Park again but I am sure this can't be true.

On a serious note you would have to wonder how such a large sea predator went extinct? I presume it would be more likely to do with its prey diminishing or something similar?

Galvasean

Well megalodon lived in tropic waters. It's main prey (whales) no longer live there so it probably lost its food supply.
Interestingly enough killer whales appeared around the same time megalodon began to diminish. It is possible that the killers competed with it and/or maybe preyed upon young megalodons.