Adorable Baby T. Rex

It may be difficult to assume towering Tyrannosaurus rex as small, but the toothy Cretaceous giant did not grow from an egg which is fully developed. In fact, T. Rex Hatchlings were almost of the the size of very skinny turkeys, and had "arms" that were longer in proportion to their tiny bodies than in adults.

And each baby T. rex was covered beautifully in a coat of downy feathers. Its feathers grew along the animal's head and tail into adulthood, according to new reconstructions that are reflective of the most accurate models of the dinosaur till date. These and many more T. rex surprises abound in T. rex: The Ultimate Predator, a new exhibit opening March 11 at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City. T. rex is one of the most iconic dinosaurs, which is presented in the exhibit. Most of the tyrannosaur species that were displayed in the exhibit were unknown to science before the year 2000, as reported by Martin Schwabacher, an exhibition writer at the AMNH. The tyrannosaurs had first appeared about 167 million years ago, nearly 100 million years before T. rex ruled the Cretaceous. These early tyrannosaurs had comparitively long arms, and were smaller and faster in comparison to the giant T. rex. But even T. rex wasn't always enormous. The exhibit's minuscule and endearingly fluffy model of a T. Rex Hatchling underscores the dinosaur's dramatic growth, as it ballooned from a turkey-size juvenile to a gargantuan adult. By the time it attained the age of 20 years old, a full-grown T. rex would measure about 12 to 13 feet (3.6 to 3.9 meters) tall at the hip, span 40 to 43 feet (12 to 13 m) from nose to tail and weigh nearly 6 to 9 tons (5,500 to 8,000 kilograms). As they grow rapidly, the juveniles gain nearly 6 lbs. (3 kg) per day for about first 13 years, said paleontologist Mark Norell, curator of both the exhibit and the Division of Paleontology at the AMNH. Though T. rex is well known to have dramatically undersized "arms"for its body size, few of this species' front limbs have been discovered from the fossil record, as reported by Norell to Live Science. And in reference with the few fossil arms that paleontologists have recently discovered, the puny arms on the exhibit's adult T. rex model are quite smaller than they've been portrayed in the past, Norell informed. But this doesn’t mean that T. rex were weak or useless. Adult T. rex also might have used its arms and claws to slash at prey that it had already knocked down with its massive head and jaws, Schwabacher stated. But with a bite force estimated of nearly 7,800 pounds-force (34,500 newtons) — the strongest of any living animal and most extinct animals — T. rex probably did not require to do much with the help its arms to find a meal.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.livescience.com/64936-t-rex-new-look-exhibit.html