Easily the most famous dinosaur that ever lived, Tyrannosaurus Rex is a case study in how much we know—and how much we don’t know—about how dinos behaved millions of years ago. For example, while we have a pretty good idea what T. Rex looked like, we’re still not sure whether it actively hunted for its food, whether it was warm- or cold-blooded (or something in between), or even whether it could run faster than a little old lady on a three-speed bike.
How do we know what we do (or don’t) know about T. Rex? Here’s a handy timeline of the pertinent fossil discoveries.
T. Rex: The Early Years
The first, fragmentary fossils of T. Rex were discovered by the famous archaeologist Edward Drinker Cope in South Dakota in 1892. Drinker promptly named his find Manospondylus Gigax, which translates roughly as “giant thin vertebra”—and who knows how history might have changed if that name had stuck.
Fortunately, a succession of more complete fossil finds shortly after the turn of the century (by Barnum Brown, the assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History) spared the king of dinosaurs from being saddled with the plebeian name Manospondylus. In 1905, AMNH president Henry Fairfield Osborn officially dubbed the species Tyrannosaurus Rex, Greek for “tyrant lizard king.”
The Family Grows
Technically, Tyrannosaurus Rex is properly referred to by its full name—since paleontologists have discovered the fossils of numerous related species, from various parts of the world, which fall under the category “tyrannosaurids.” These two-legged dinosaurs all look roughly like T. Rex, albeit smaller, and include such carnivores as Gorgosaurus, Siamotyrannus, and Nanotyrannus.
A brief word about the last name on this list, Nanotyrannus (literally, “tiny tyrant.”) It’s still a matter of some dispute whether this dinosaur, which was identified from a single fossilized skull found in the 1940’s, represents a genuinely new species or was simply an unfortunate T. Rex child who died young. That’s the problem with investigating creatures that died out tens of millions of years ago!
A Girl (or Boy) Named Sue
The most spectacular T. Rex discovery to date was made by an amateur paleontologist named Sue Hendrickson, who unearthed a near-complete T. Rex skeleton in South Dakota in 1990. Named “Sue” in Hendrickson’s honor, this dino apparently perished at the age of 28 from a bite to the head (which counts as natural causes in Cretaceous times), making it the oldest of its breed yet found. (By the way, don’t let the name fool you—it’s unknown whether Dinosaur Sue was male or female.)
Showing that no good T. Rex deed goes unpunished, Hendrickson spent the next few years immersed in legal proceedings pertaining to Sue’s ownership—kind of a dinosaur custody battle. It was finally determined that Sue’s bones belonged to the person who owned the piece of land where she was found, and in 1997 the remains were auctioned off to Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History for $8 million.
So Many Questions…
In a way, T. Rex’s popularity has been both a blessing and a curse for paleontologists. On the plus side, any scientist who makes a major discovery about T. Rex behavior or physiology is sure to land herself front-page headlines around the world. On the minus side, people don’t like it when their idols are tampered with—especially if a supposedly fearsome, unstoppable dinosaur is shown to be, well, kind of a wimp.
For example, nothing gets a T. Rex fan’s blood boiling like the theory that T. Rex scavenged for its food, rather than hunting it down, or that it was slower than a New York City bus during rush hour. No matter what the experts say, though, you can be sure that Hollywood will go on portraying T. Rex the old-fashioned way—as the perpetually grumpy, hungry, fleet-footed king of the dinosaurs.
