https://interestingengineering.com/science/t-rex-feathered-dinosaur-study-disappoints-kids

New research indicates the T. rex likely had feathers, challenging prior beliefs.

For a long time, popular depictions showed dinosaurs as dull, scaly reptiles.

It’s now believed that many dinosaurs, even those as fearsome as the tyrannosaurs, may have been partially or completely covered in feathers.

UC Berkeley researchers suggest that some of these dinosaurs were much more akin to the vibrant, extravagant birds we see today.

The analysis also challenges previous assumptions about the dinosaur’s speed.

Contrary to its popular image as a fast predator seen chasing vehicles in movies, they suggest that the T. rex‘s terrifying dash was more fiction than fact.

*T. rex: Slow walkers*

In recent years, modern scientific advancements have revealed that many long-held beliefs about ancient creatures could be inaccurate.

Paleontologists are actively reshaping these ideas, including assumptions about the T. rex’s speed.

For instance, a 2021 study using computer simulations of tail movement suggests that the Tyrannosaurus was a slow walker. This aligns with recent findings that decoding dinosaur speed solely from fossilized tracks might be inaccurate.

Paleontologists often face the challenge of not being able to study the soft tissues of extinct animals, as these rarely preserve. To overcome this, experts compare them to living animals.

For the T. rex’s speed, the team looked to bipedal birds like chickens and ostriches in this new study.

“After really sort of ground-truthing, figuring out how much bone and tissue needs to be on the animal to reach a particular speed with enough power, people realized Tyrannosaurus probably didn’t run more than 20, 25 miles per hour,” said Jack Tseng, a UC Berkeley vertebrate paleontologist and functional morphologist.

*Dinosaurs were possibly scavengers*

Some researchers even state: What if the T. rex wasn’t primarily a hunter, but a scavenger?

This hypothesis is supported by bite and scratch marks found on fossilized prey.

Tseng and his team studied the bite mechanics of Jane, a juvenile T. rex. This research helped them understand the forces involved in biting.

They noted that the tooth characteristics and biting forces needed for scavenging on tough, decomposing carcasses are different. These differ from the forces used by active predators attacking fresh, moving prey.
“If they didn’t hunt and were scavengers, it would blow everyone’s mind. That would be very disappointing for a lot of kids,” Tseng noted.

*How sauropods functioned*

The insights don’t stop there. Take the colossal sauropods – those towering, long-necked plant-eaters, the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.

How did they possibly get enough oxygen all the way up their incredible 50-foot necks?

The answer, surprisingly, came from looking at the respiratory systems of living dinosaurs or modern birds, like peregrine falcons.

Birds have hollow bones around their lungs, vastly expanding their aerobic capacity. Paleontologists discovered that sauropods had similar hollowness in their vertebral columns, functioning as “pseudo lung systems” to facilitate oxygen delivery to their lungs.

“We can really start to conclude some seemingly impossible inferences about extinct animals just by understanding how living animals work,” says Tseng, “creating this bridge from biology to paleontology.”

Tseng believes the lessons from paleontology hold vital clues for our future, especially concerning climate change.

“In a way, paleontology is sort of pre-adapted to plug in to understanding the future of Earth because we have billions of years of the fossil record to learn from,” the author said.

Fossils, from massive dinosaurs to tiny mollusks, offer a window into how species adapt, survive, or perish in the face of environmental shifts, warming and cooling cycles, and habitat disturbances.