So time travelers, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Reuters reports that the king of carnivores was even fiercer than we imagined:
Using three-dimensional laser scans and computer modeling, British and U.S. scientists “weighed” five T. rex specimens, including the Chicago Field Museum’s “Sue,” the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton known.
They concluded that Sue, who roamed the Great Plains of North America 67 million years ago, would have tipped the scales at more than 9 tons, or some 30 percent more than expected.
Intriguingly, the smallest and youngest specimen weighed less than thought, shedding new light on the animals’ biology and indicating that T. rex grew more than twice as fast between 10 and 15 years of age as suggested in a study five years ago.
“At their fastest, in their teenage years, they were putting on 11 pounds or 5 kilograms a day,” John Hutchinson of the Royal Veterinary College in London told Reuters.
“Just think how much meat that is. That’s a hell of a lot of cheeseburgers … it’s a whole lot of duck-billed dinosaurs they needed to be chowing down on.”
Like meat Hoovers. Now if only we had some good explanations for those tiny front legs.