T-rex – what people don’t know about the world-famous villain of Jurassic Park 1

T-rex is the most famous dinosaur ever known. However, there are some things that many people do not know. Such as that T-rex had feathers when it was a juvenile, or that its mouth was coated in harmful bacteria like a monitor lizard. T-rex’s D-shaped bone-crushing teeth would cut into into the flesh and bones of its prey. When it had a firm grip on its prey, it injected some bacteria into the already weakened body, infecting it. Being already weak from broken bones and blood loss, the prey would be in no condition to resist and fight the unwelcome microbes and would die. Palaeontologists first thought that T-rex used to live alone, living in a large pack when mating and breeding, like modern tigers. So imagine the surprise when Philip Currie, a palaeotologist of Alberta, Canada, found 20 Albertosaurus’ remains, all of different genders and ages. Some were juveniles, some were big adults, some were babies, some were very old, and some were teenage. There were also males and females too. Albertosaurus was a close, yet smaller relative of T-rex. Then a gang of Mapusaurus, the biggest meat-eating dinosaur ever, was found in Argentina alongside a herd of Argentinosaurus, heaviest land animal ever, second in weight only to the blue whale, which is 200 tons, while Argentinosaurus a 100 tons. These discoveries led scientists to believe that T-rex and its other relatives might live in packs too. Scientists also used to think that Big meat-eaters were scaly, like modern lizards and snakes. But thay were surprised when two tyrannosaurs and a huge therizinosaur, a plant-eating family of coelurosaurians were discovered in Liaoning Quarry, China, with a clear impression of what was a fuzz called ‘protofeathers’. The first tyrannosaur found was small, but the second was as huge as Albertosaurus. The therizinosaur was the biggest ever found, with huge sloth-like claws on its hands. It was because of these claws that therizinosaurs are sometimes regarded as carnivores or omnivores, but the teeth are very blunt and flat, so it could have been used for fighting predators and rivals. The first tyrannosaur was named Dilong, or ‘Emperor Dragon.’ These discoveries led to the belief T-rex and its relatives in North America could have feathers too. But there were no impressions of feathers found on T-rex. There was not a single hair on Albertosaurus. All the southern-living tyrannosaurs were free of feathers. Scientists came to a concluson: The tyrannosaurs in southern Canada and the United States would have feathers as a juvenile, then have some warm-blooded technique as they grew. The reason no one had found feathers was because juveniles were so rare.