Speaker 1: Yeah, Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison Madermelick, the science editor at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, and this is Robert Lamb, science writer
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Today we're talking about
Speaker 1: the tyrant lizard King a k a. The Tyrannosaurus Rex. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a dinosaur that I grew up with, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people out there grew up with. Um.
Speaker 1: I've had the little plastic figuring of him. I was
Speaker 1: having him beat up on Try Sarah tops attacking Stegasaurus,
Speaker 1: is eating g I Joe men, you know, knocking down
Speaker 1: wooden block castles. The Tyrannosaurs Rex was just no kidding,
Speaker 1: a hero, I think to a lot of children, and
Speaker 1: uh and I and I think still is today. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I have kids, have nephews, have all sorts of little
Speaker 1: ones running around, and I went to one of the
Speaker 1: what one of the toy stores recently and there's ginormous
Speaker 1: amounts of dinosaur toys aimed kids. Actually some that are
Speaker 1: I was pretty fascinated about. Yeah, and of course, if
Speaker 1: you look at the depictions of what this guy looked
Speaker 1: like you can you can tell why we're so attached
Speaker 1: to it. I mean, he's just he's just awesome looking.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a big bipedal dinosaur with just massive jaws,
Speaker 1: enormous teeth, little bity front arms, but massive legs, an
Speaker 1: enormous tale. I mean, it's it's like a dragon, just
Speaker 1: a sheer monster. Yeah. I mean when I picture a dinosaur,
Speaker 1: you probably think of a t rex. I know I do.
Speaker 1: So let's quantify the two rex a little bit. He's
Speaker 1: about forty ft long, which, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: is the height of a four story building, assuming ten
Speaker 1: ft per story um the sky, as Robert mentioned, had huge,
Speaker 1: huge shoppers. I think his teeth were what seven seven
Speaker 1: inches per tooth, and his jaw was about four ft long.
Speaker 1: I mean that's the size of a small person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you factor in that he probably had you know,
Speaker 1: some more between four thousand and six thousand pounds of
Speaker 1: pressure per square inch with that thing. I also read
Speaker 1: the t rex could wolf down five hundred pounds in
Speaker 1: one bite. Can you imagine? The t rex was probably
Speaker 1: one of the last dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth,
Speaker 1: right before the KT boundary extinction event, wiped everything out,
Speaker 1: um and we found fossils in the United States, Canada,
Speaker 1: East Asia, and the US. Actually, Montana has been a
Speaker 1: virtual treasure trove of t rex is. So with all
Speaker 1: these crazy attributes, you know, the huge shaws, the crazy chompers,
Speaker 1: the big stature, you'd think that the t Rex was
Speaker 1: the fiercest of the fierce. Yeah, naturally, And actually that's
Speaker 1: how it was depicted by artists. Charles R. Night in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundred's um Night was the first one
Speaker 1: to to paint the t rex and he painted it
Speaker 1: standing upright, the tail was dragging on the ground and
Speaker 1: he's squaring off with the Triceratops. And the Triceratops is
Speaker 1: that dinosaur with you know, the frill around its neck
Speaker 1: and the two horns, and I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: a peace loving animal, except for when it was facing
Speaker 1: off against the t Rex. Yeah, but I've often heard
Speaker 1: it put like the t Rex is like is the
Speaker 1: little boy's favorite dinosaur and the try Saratops is the
Speaker 1: girl's favorite dinosaur. You just made that up, Now, that's true.
Speaker 1: I know my my wife's favorite dinosaurs to try Saratops,
Speaker 1: and mine is the t Rex. I think mine was
Speaker 1: the Prontosaurus. Well that's another peaceful even the not exactly
Speaker 1: a real dinosaur, but still you can hold onto that fantasy.
Speaker 1: I can, I can, and I will. Um. So Night
Speaker 1: was was the first guy to really get down what
Speaker 1: t rex look like on paper, and as such, there
Speaker 1: are billions of toys spawn from this image and even Godzilla. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: basically Night's image looks like a guy in a dinosaur costume.
Speaker 1: It's like the same stature. You know, you could say,
Speaker 1: we're really throwing our anthropomorphic baggage at a bunch of
Speaker 1: fossils and creating something that kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: good dude in a suit. But film fans have also
Speaker 1: um gotten to witness the emergence of new models for
Speaker 1: how the t rex would have looked. And you guys
Speaker 1: are gonna where we're going with this Jurassic Park classic scene, yep,
Speaker 1: dinosaur chasing Sam Neil and company in the vehicle. This
Speaker 1: is this is a very different take on the dinosaur.
Speaker 1: This isn't it's it's more streamlined. The tail it's up
Speaker 1: in the air, and it's it's it's running. It's really
Speaker 1: upgraded nights vision of what the animal consisted of into
Speaker 1: like an even more awesome predator. Right, So before night
Speaker 1: kind of had the t Rex standing as this big, plotting,
Speaker 1: hulking dinosaur. But then you know, with the with the
Speaker 1: advent of Jurassic Park and even earlier than that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the t Rex gotta makeover. And he was sleeker, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, his body's parallel to the ground,
Speaker 1: tails not dragging on the ground anymore. And and this
Speaker 1: is this is the newer version of the t Rex
Speaker 1: that that we now know, so even you know, even
Speaker 1: more reason for kids to love him. But just as
Speaker 1: kids get older and uh, suddenly they learned a little
Speaker 1: more about their heroes and their their heroes, you know,
Speaker 1: tarnish a little bit um. Also, a lot of studies
Speaker 1: have come out to sort of tarnish the reputation a
Speaker 1: little bit of the t Rex. The t rex is
Speaker 1: has gone down. Yeah, no it's not so much, you know,
Speaker 1: no drug scandals or anything transsi no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you know, car Rex or anything. But but no, there's
Speaker 1: been some new studies to to cast his role as
Speaker 1: King of the Dinosaurs in doubt, namely that maybe he
Speaker 1: wasn't so much a super predator as a pretty good scavenger. Scavenger,
Speaker 1: it's just a totally different volume. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: that it goes from you know, king of the jungle
Speaker 1: to like a vulture or you know, or something. And
Speaker 1: there are a number of reasons for this. It's not
Speaker 1: just people wanting to bad mouth uh that you know,
Speaker 1: a hero to children. Some of the the attributes that
Speaker 1: t Rex had huge nostrils, which is great if you
Speaker 1: want to smell out some dead dinos out there in
Speaker 1: the primordial jungle. All right, those teeth and jaws, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're great for chomping into living things, but they're all
Speaker 1: so great for busting through giant you know, Stegasaurus corpses, etcetera,
Speaker 1: getting at that bone marrow that's so rich in nutrients.
Speaker 1: And that's another thing they've in studying this stuff called
Speaker 1: copper light, which is basically fossilized fossilized dino uh excrement.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh. They found a lot of bone fragments making
Speaker 1: it look like these guys consumed a lot of bones. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a lot like a really interesting bird that
Speaker 1: you find in the mountains of Ethiopia but also throughout
Speaker 1: Europe Asian Africa called the lambur guyer. And this guy
Speaker 1: looks like basically like a big vulture, really kind of
Speaker 1: a beautiful animal. But he he shows up late to
Speaker 1: all the the dead things. The other vultures get their
Speaker 1: first pick over the flesh, the lambur guyer shows up.
Speaker 1: He goes after the bones, takes the bones, drops them
Speaker 1: from a really really high altitude. They crack open, and
Speaker 1: then he just gulps down all these bone fragments. All right, there,
Speaker 1: nothing really is wasted in nature, right, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of nutrients inside bones, um, you know, the bone marrow,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And it's the stuff that not every scavenger
Speaker 1: is going to be specialized enough to take advantage off.
Speaker 1: So and then they also found, um, some t rex
Speaker 1: teeth in the dino do basically ends up painting this
Speaker 1: picture of the t rex is a like a giant
Speaker 1: trash compactor going at these at the bones of dead animals,
Speaker 1: just chomping it all down vicious so viciously. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: it's just bone fragments and his own teeth getting snapped
Speaker 1: off and you know, passing through his system. I just
Speaker 1: had sort of a funny vision of you ripping into
Speaker 1: some meal and losing a couple of teeth in the process.
Speaker 1: But I'm imagining that's what it was like for the
Speaker 1: t rex. Yeah, I've never been that hungry, but I've
Speaker 1: never had to hunt down my dinner in in dinosaur times.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite supporting ideas that the t
Speaker 1: rex was a scavenger um is on the basis of parents.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so, Uh. The idea is that the t
Speaker 1: rex is not too attractive of a dinosaur, and well,
Speaker 1: let's just call spade a spade. Uh, the t rex
Speaker 1: is ugly, and h his ugliness he has in common
Speaker 1: with hyenas and vultures and and the legs. So this
Speaker 1: is uh. I really hate to imagine that one being
Speaker 1: taught in school two kids and saying, since the t
Speaker 1: rex was an ugly dinosaur, he had no choice but
Speaker 1: to eat things that others wouldn't, you know, That's just
Speaker 1: it's it's very silly. Saratops, however, is beautiful and she
Speaker 1: used to eat whatever she wants. I also heard that
Speaker 1: the those powerful legs could have been made for walking
Speaker 1: long distances as opposed to running down pray. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you pray is not going anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's just a matter of running off some other
Speaker 1: scavengers when you get there. You don't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: run like a freight train. People have also made the
Speaker 1: argument that well they have they have museless little arms,
Speaker 1: all the more reason that they're just scavengers. But that
Speaker 1: goes both ways. People point out, well, all snakes, you
Speaker 1: have plenty of excellent snake predators, and obviously snakes don't
Speaker 1: have arms, so that one's kind of a stupid one
Speaker 1: in my opinion. However, the predator side still has some
Speaker 1: has some supporters and there, and they really like to
Speaker 1: put out this just awesome image in my mind, and
Speaker 1: I think all the children out there will agree of
Speaker 1: of this guy running just at a at a really
Speaker 1: fast speed, opening his jaws wide and just crashing into
Speaker 1: his prey. Yeah, and that's where and then that ends
Speaker 1: up shattering teeth as well, Like just opening his jaws
Speaker 1: and just running smack into the side of a stegosaurs.
Speaker 1: I kind of just picture the t rex going running
Speaker 1: full speed and either way they definitely not on each
Speaker 1: other a lot um. But but then that's one of
Speaker 1: those things you have. You have beetles in the wild
Speaker 1: that have basically evolved large mandibles just for wrestling with
Speaker 1: each other, so that that doesn't you know, necessarily mean
Speaker 1: one thing or another. But you know, even if they
Speaker 1: were scavengers, they were probably getting into some pretty serious
Speaker 1: scrapes with each other. So the the whole argument of
Speaker 1: whether the t rex was a scavenger predator also leads
Speaker 1: us into whether the t rex was fast or slow. Right,
Speaker 1: So if he's a scavenger, then he can be a
Speaker 1: little bit you know, less zippy to his next meal,
Speaker 1: whereas if he's a if he's a predator, then he's
Speaker 1: probably likely to be more agile and fast, fast on
Speaker 1: his feet, right. And it's important to mention too that
Speaker 1: this is something that's that's very hard to track down
Speaker 1: evidence for. There's almost no direct evidence. Um, we have
Speaker 1: these things called track ways, which are basically fossilized dinosaur footprints,
Speaker 1: and they tend not to be long enough though to
Speaker 1: encompass the stride of a t rex. So a lot
Speaker 1: of this we're having to look at other factors. It's
Speaker 1: not just a matter of looking at the footprints. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: exactly how fast was a t rex? Well, some say
Speaker 1: that he could run at forty five miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and others have suggested a more moderate twenty five miles
Speaker 1: per hour. Again, I mean, think about one of these
Speaker 1: guys coming after full speed forty five miles per hour.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, you couldn't take him out on the freeway,
Speaker 1: but in an animal speed, that's pretty that's pretty good,
Speaker 1: Which leads us to your next area of a scientific argument.
Speaker 1: Was this guy warm blooded or cold blooded? Well, if
Speaker 1: you're thinking that he's kind of a zippy being and
Speaker 1: he's chasing down prey and or even walking long distances
Speaker 1: to get out carry on, then then chances are maybe
Speaker 1: he wasn't cold blooded, but he was warm blooded. So
Speaker 1: just just a little refresher course in case you guys
Speaker 1: can't remember this body of the cold blended animals such
Speaker 1: like such as a snake or a lizard is is
Speaker 1: one that changes with the ambient temperature. So, um, a
Speaker 1: lizard is going to be more active when it's warm,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be kind of sluggish and I
Speaker 1: don't feel like getting out of bed when it's cold,
Speaker 1: whereas warm blooded animals such as mammals and birds and
Speaker 1: maybe dinosaurs are are active all the time regardless of temperature.
Speaker 1: Where this ties into the whole speed issue too, is
Speaker 1: it's basically a matter of looking at these bodies, the
Speaker 1: body of this dinosaur, and saying how much energy would
Speaker 1: it need to run at this speed? And in some
Speaker 1: instances the scientists argue that it would that the body
Speaker 1: would require more energy than a cold blooded system would
Speaker 1: be able to create. Okay, yeah, So then that leads
Speaker 1: to people saying, well, dinosaurs were cold blooded, so they
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly run that fast, or people saying, uh, the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs ran fast, so they have to be warm blooded.
Speaker 1: So basically it seems like we have we have to
Speaker 1: get to know the t rex a little bit better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and and also there's you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about applying anthropomorphic baggage to dinosaurs earlier. I think part
Speaker 1: of that too is when we think of think of
Speaker 1: a dinosaur like a t rex is being like a
Speaker 1: predator or being a scavenger. We tend to think of
Speaker 1: our most iconic modern examples the right or you know,
Speaker 1: a vulture or you know something else that runs in
Speaker 1: front of your car, you know, to eat a dead possum,
Speaker 1: and their nature doesn't always work in such well defined uh.
Speaker 1: You know, examples like for instance, takee commodo dragon. This
Speaker 1: is a large predator and it is at the top
Speaker 1: of its food chain, and it's in its respective ecosystems,
Speaker 1: but it's not running down gazelle or anything, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not even depending on like that kind
Speaker 1: of energy to take its prey. It'll come up to,
Speaker 1: say a water buffalo, and will bite it, and then
Speaker 1: it'll set around and wait weeks for that water buffalo
Speaker 1: to die from the venom, and then once it gets
Speaker 1: week we can off. All the other commodo dragons will
Speaker 1: come over and they'll feast on it. So that's not
Speaker 1: you know, a very iconic view of a predator's role.
Speaker 1: And on the other end, scavengers aren't necessarily the skulking,
Speaker 1: horrible little creatures in the night that you know, run
Speaker 1: from every light. Right if you kind of think of
Speaker 1: the whole green movement that's going on today, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could regard scavengers as kind of heroic and that
Speaker 1: nothing is wasted in nature and everything is eaten. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's not as much that the t rex
Speaker 1: um is losing its appeal to kids, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's like an image makeover the t Rex isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: the king of the jungle, but hey, look how how
Speaker 1: much of a you know, a green ICONI is eating
Speaker 1: all that bone and well and and maybe he's a
Speaker 1: little bit of both. And in fact, I think that's
Speaker 1: what Tracy Wilson was getting at in her article was
Speaker 1: the Tyrannosaurus rex a predator or scavenger? And you can
Speaker 1: find that article, of course, on how staff Works. But
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe the t Rex did have a little
Speaker 1: bit of both. Yeah, I for one, I'm still gonna
Speaker 1: continue to put t Rex at the top of my
Speaker 1: list favorite dinosaur, top of your food chain. Robert, huh,
Speaker 1: yeah about you? Do you like the t rex? If
Speaker 1: this this has changed your view on him? I think
Speaker 1: the t rex is pretty cool. You're still sticking to
Speaker 1: that Bronosaurus it doesn't actually exist. I still do like
Speaker 1: the purple Bronosaurus a little bit. Ak If Windstones. If
Speaker 1: you have questions or you want to tell us about
Speaker 1: your favorite dinosaur, she just an email at science stuff
Speaker 1: at how staff works dot com and they, meantime check
Speaker 1: out some cool articles like our Komodo dragon's mouths deadlier
Speaker 1: than Cobra's venom or was Tyrannosaurus rex, a predator or scavenger.
Speaker 1: And you can also check got the blogs where you
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