Tyrannosaurus Rex has been so often portrayed in the movies as a swift, merciless, savage hunter--witness that Porta-Potty-chomper in Jurassic Park--that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that ravenous Rexes are strictly a Hollywood invention, and may or or may not bear any connection to the actual truth.
The main reasons so many paleontologists--and Hollywood moguls--subscribe to the fearsome hunter theory are T. Rex's teeth, which are large, sharp, and extremely numerous, as well as the enormous size of T. Rex itself. It seems unlikely that nature would have evolved such a set of huge choppers for a creature that feasted on already dead (or dying) animals, but then again, evolution isn't always strictly linear or logical.
There are four main strands of evidence in favor of the theory that T. Rex happened upon, rather than hunted down, its food:
- T-Rex had small, weak, beady eyes, where you might expect an active predator to have super-sharp vision.
- T. Rex had famously small, almost vestigial arms, which would have been near-useless in a close grapple with live prey.
- T. Rex was none too fast, more a lumbering lummox than the sleek predator of Jurassic Park. It was once thought that this dino could chase prey at a blistering 40 miles per hour, but today, a relatively pokey 25 mph seems to be a better estimate.
- Most convincing of all to many scientists, analysis of T. Rex skulls shows the presence of unusually large olfactory lobes, which would have been ideal for catching the scent of rotting carcasses from miles away.
While the T.Rex-as-scavenger theory has been surprisingly quick to catch on in the scientific community, not everyone is convinced. In fact, this may not even be an either/or type of argument: like other opportunistic carnivores, T. Rex may have actively hunted at some times, and at other times it may have feasted on prey that had either died of natural causes or been pursued and killed by other, smaller dinosaurs. Pending decisive evidence, we may never know for sure.
