Dino card No. 1838 of 2,015

Tyrannosaurus

Say it: tie-RAN-oh-SORE-us

Name means: “tyrant lizard”1

Ate: MeatTyrannosaursLate Cretaceous

Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs that ever lived. It stomped across western North America about 69 to 66 million years ago, at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs. With its huge skull, powerful legs, and tiny arms, it was the king of its prehistoric world.1

Lived

84 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

western North America, especially the USA (Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming) and Canada (Alberta, Saskatchewan)3 1

Food

Meat1

Length

12.3 to 13 m1

most complete specimen is 12.3 to 12.4 m; some may have reached over 13 m

Weight

8 tonnes to 8.8 tonnes1

Height

3.7 to 4 m1

at the hips

Artist's life restoration of Tyrannosaurus — How Tyrannosaurus may have looked, by Steveoc 86. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any land animal ever, with a force of 35,000 to 57,000 newtons in its back teeth.1

Its arms were very short but surprisingly strong, with two clawed fingers on each hand.1

The first Tyrannosaurus rex fossil was a tooth found in Colorado in 1874, but the animal wasn't named until 1905.1

A set of footprints from Wyoming shows that a young Tyrannosaurus walked at a speed of about 2.8 to 5 miles per hour.1

Tyrannosaurus lived on an island continent called Laramidia, which was separated by a shallow sea from the eastern part of North America.1

Some scientists think Tyrannosaurus may have started appearing as early as the middle Campanian age, about 83 million years ago.3 1

Myth buster

Myth: Tyrannosaurus rex was just a slow scavenger that only ate dead animals.

Truth: Most paleontologists now agree that T. rex was an active predator that hunted live prey, though it also scavenged when it had the chance.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Tyrannosaurus
Named by: Osborn 19053
Group: Tyrannosaurs
Family / clade: Tyrannosauridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Tyrannosauroidea > Tyrannosauridae3
Age of the rocks: 84 to 66 million years (Campanian to Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Hell Creek, Lance, Denver3
Countries: USA, Canada, Russia, Mexico, China3
Fossil records: 87 in the Paleobiology Database3
Also known as: Dinotyrannus, Dynamosaurus, Manospondylus, Stygivenator (older names now counted as the same animal)3
Discovery: Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History found the first partial skeleton in Wyoming in 1900, and a more complete one in Montana in 1902. Henry Fairfield Osborn named it Tyrannosaurus rex in 1905.1 2
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether some smaller tyrannosaur fossils belong to a separate genus called Nanotyrannus or are just young Tyrannosaurus rex.1

Where the facts come from

Tyrannosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History/Volume 21/Tyrannosaurus and Other Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaurs - Wikisource, the free online library (en.wikisource.org)
Tyrannosaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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