Raptorex: 1/100th Perfect Scale of Descendant T. Rex

September 18th, 2009

A 125 Million year-old dinosaur, standing at just 9-feet tall, shows the features of the great T. Rex.

Raptorex shows that tyrannosaur design evolved at “punk size,” said Sereno, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, “basically our [human] body weight. And that’s pretty staggering, because there’s no other example that I can think of where an animal has been so finely designed at about 100th the size that it would eventually become.”

So what he is saying is that this relatively small dinosaur was 1/100 of the size of the eventual T. Rex, and that this Raptorex showed all of the features of the T. Rex to scale. It was what evolved into the T. Rex!

AT least these are the conclusions being made I would assume. This article doesn’t tell me enough information though I don’t think. It doesn’t go in enough depth to give us any other possibilities in my opinion. As I’m sure most of you are in the same boat, I am not an expert as to how a T. Rex actually forms, and grows into adulthood in regards to its features. If I am understanding this correctly, they are either disregarding this possibility that it is a baby T. Rex, or that the features of this Raptorex are much different than a young T. Rex. He certainly seems too excited for this to be the case doesn’t he?

Sereno marvels at the scalability of the tyrannosaur body type, which when sized up 90 million years ago completely dominated the predatory eco-niche in both Asia and North America until the great extinction 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

“On other continents like Africa, you have as many as three large predators living in the same areas that split among them the job of eating meat,” he said. But in Africa, the allosaurs never went extinct, as they did in North America, possibly presenting an evolutionary opportunity for Raptorex. “We have no evidence that it was a competitive takeover,” said Sereno, “because we have never found large tyrannosaurs and allosaurs together.”

What does that have to do with this at all? This article seems like it just went out of its way to be vague…lol

Let’s throw something into this one that has nothing to do with the subject as well since I saw these while reading this one. The T. Rex must have the best way to lose belly fat because he certainly is faster than anyone alive. Check out this article from 2007 about the speed of the T. Rex.