Science & Technology

Life Finds a Way (Dinosaurs)

Easily my favourite line from the Jurassic Park movies, “life finds a way” is essentially a very eloquent way of explaining Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Life is able to move forward and survive under the harshest circumstances imaginable. It takes on different shapes and sizes as it adapts to survive and thrive in its environment. The fittest rule the world, and everything and everyone wants to be the fittest. The dinosaur is the perfect example of evolving to survive. Each was deadly and dominant in its own way, whether quick and small like the Compsognoathus, heavily armoured and powerful like the Anylosaurus, or massive and ferocious like one of the world’s best known dinosaurs: Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The Tyrannosaurus, or “tyrant lizard” was a perfect killing machine. Imagine an earthshaking beast over 12 metres tall bearing down on you. With an estimated top running speed of 40 to 70 kilometers per hour, it was able to outpace all but the fastest prey. Its bite was its most brutal feeding technique, and possible jaw strengths range from 35,000 to 235,000 newtons. The most glaring deficits in the Tyrannosaurus’ killing arsenal were its relatively small arms and lack of maneuverability. I say relatively because the arms measured around a meter long—which we would consider long for a normal person—but were dwarfed by the rest of the body. Evidence suggests, however, that these arms were anything but useless. Heavily muscled tendons were attached to every bone and researchers have suggested that these were used to hold prey once caught, or mates during reproduction.

What really separated the T. Rex from the rest of the pack though was its keen senses, which were specially attuned for hunting. Large and acutely tuned eyes allowed the Tyrannosaurus to see up to 6 kilometres away, and their eyes were more than thirteen times as acute as a human’s. Large cochlea augmented their super vision with intense low frequency hearing. Prey rumbling the ground as they walked far in the distance would have been heard by the T. Rex. The size of their brain cavity versus overall mass also suggests that they had a keen intellect to go along with their perfect senses and destructive physical abilities.

How is it possible though that this perfect storm of evolution would come together to create the most powerful apex predator in the known history of the world?

A new discovery from Uzbekistan has shed some light on this mystery. Dubbed the Timurlengia euotica, or “Pre-Rex” as it has become known, shared many traits with the Tyrannosaurus, but was only a fraction of the size. At about three metres long and around 600 pounds the Pre-Rex was around the size of a horse, but still deadly like its larger descendant. It still had large cochlea and a relatively large brain cavity, meaning that its senses were heightened in the same way as the Tyrannosaurs’.

Researchers think that the Pre-Rex fills an evolutionary gap of around 20 million years before the rise of the Tyrannosaurus. The event which ended the age of the dinosaurs occurred around 61 million years ago, and the Tyrannosaurus became the apex predator around 80 million years ago. The Pre-Rex fossils have been dated to around 90 million years ago and other fossils from 80 million year ago show relatives even smaller than the Timurlengia. In a span of only 10 million years the Tyrannosaur grew four times longer and twenty times heavier.

Evolution is a wondrous and selective process, one which the Tyrannosaur and its ancestors rode it all the way to the top.

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