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T-Rex study shows how beasts grew from ‘terrible teens’ into fully-grown ‘monsters’

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Illustration of a teenage T-Rex in its native habitat (Image: PA)

We humans are famous for behaving badly in our teenage years.

But the sulks of even the angriest adolescent would pale into insignificance if compared to the ferocity of a teen T-Rex.

Scientists have discovered new evidence which sheds light on how the beasts grew from juveniles into ‘plodding, crushing monsters’.

The Tyrannosaurus Rex reached up to 40 feet in size and had vicious five-foot-long ‘bone-crushing teeth’.

Scientists spend a lot of time studying adult fossils, meaning they know a lot about what the beasts were like when they were all grown-up.

However, comparatively little work has been done to understand smaller fossils, which has led to claims that relatively puny samples were actually members of a different species of ‘pygmy T-Rex’.

Now researchers have analysed the remains of tyrannosaurs nicknamed ‘Jane’ and ‘Petey’ that died during their ‘terrible teens’.

This allowed to ‘refute’ theories about the existence of pygmy tyrannosaurs and show that smaller fossils were simply younger.

View of a teen T-Rex skull (Image: PA)
The beasts were about as big as a draft horse View of a teen T-Rex skull (Image: PA)

‘Historically, many museums would collect the biggest, most impressive fossils of a dinosaur species for display and ignore the others,’ said Holly Woodward of Oklahoma State University.

‘The problem is that those smaller fossils may be from younger animals. So, for a long while we’ve had large gaps in our understanding of how dinosaurs grew up, and T-Rex is no exception.’

Woodward and her team removed thin slices from the leg bones of Jane and Petey and examined them at high magnification.

‘To me, it’s always amazing to find that if you have something like a huge fossilized dinosaur bone, it’s fossilized on the microscopic level as well,’ Woodward added.

‘And by comparing these fossilized microstructures to similar features found in modern bone, we know they provide clues to metabolism, growth rate, and age.’

The team determined that the young dinos were growing as fast as modern-day warm-blooded animals such as mammals and birds.

Woodward and her colleagues also found that by counting the annual rings within the bone, much like counting tree rings, they could work out then Jane and Petey were 13 and 15 years old when they died.

There had been speculation that the two small skeletons weren’t tyrannosaurs at all, but a smaller relative called Nanotyrannus.

Holly Woodward of Oklahoma State University (Image: PA)

Study of the bones using histology led the researchers to the conclusion that the skeletons were teens.

Woodward said that the monsters underwent ‘drastic changes’ as they grew.

When young, the killer dinosaurs were ‘fast, fleet-footed and had knife-like teeth for cutting, whereas adults were lumbering bone crushers’.

The team also discovered that the dino had a remarkable survival trick which allowed it to survive lean years by slowing down its growth during periods where there wasn’t enough food about.

Woodward said her research ‘writes a new chapter in the early years of the world’s most famous dinosaur, providing evidence that it assumed the crown of tyrant king long before it reached adult size’.



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