rex’s snout was also made up of somewhat flexible bones, Schroeder says, which can be an advantage for a big bite. rex has a jackhammer for a mouth,” Schroeder says. rex teeth reach 12 inches, and they’re built for impact with a round, thick shape. rex’s teeth, Holtz says, were double those of a Giganotosaurus tooth, which could be around 8 inches in total length. rex and Giganotosaurus would’ve appeared to have the same size teeth. For one, the tyrant lizard has a long, deep snout made up of thick jaw bones, with very deeply rooted teeth. The lowest estimates for an adult’s bite force are around 34.5 kilonewtons, he says, “which is twice as strong as the bite of a saltwater crocodile, the largest reptilian predator of today.” rex’s bite force is “almost off the scale,” says Holtz. rex can deliver the most skull-crushing of chomps, while Giganotosaurus’ bite leverages sharp, blade-like teeth to slash its prey’s flesh. “They’re basically going to walk up to one another and try to grab each other with their giant mouths,” she says.īoth predators’ bites are vicious in different ways. So there’s only one remaining option with any teeth. They both had “teeny, tiny little arms and giant heads,” she says, “so they’re probably not going to be pulling and scratching at one another.” Kicking is also out, because their feet would probably be too heavy to be of use in a fight. rex and Giganotosaurus can be described as “head hunter theropods,” Schroeder says. “If either of them managed to get a good bite onto the other one first, they’re probably going to win.” What’s in a bite? “Both of them are big predators adapted to killing very large prey,” he says. Holtz agrees that it could be any dinosaur’s game, despite admitting professional and personal bias toward tyrannosaurs (when he was 3, he wanted to grow up to be one). They’re separated by 150 million years of evolution. And they’re animals that lived 30 million years apart on different continents. “You can’t say this one has this absolute top speed. But in a one-on-one fight, there is unlikely to be an obvious champion and an underdog, says Kat Schroeder, a paleomacroecologist and postdoctoral research associate at Yale University. Some of those differing characteristics might be advantageous in a rumble. This kind of thought experiment might lead to a better understanding of how these creatures followed their own evolutionary paths to become distinct, highly successful predators. rex enjoyed the cooler, wetter environment at the edge of lakes and shallow seas in North America.īut pitting the two against each other serves to highlight their differences, says Thomas Holtz, a principal lecturer in vertebrate paleontology at the University of Maryland who studies tyrannosaurs and their motion. Giganotosaurus, whose genus name translates to “giant southern lizard,” stalked the arid, hot desert of what is now Argentina, while T. rex came on the scene about 30 million years later, at the very end of the age of the dinosaurs. Both theropod dinosaurs roamed the planet during the Cretaceous period, but Giganotosaurus lived about 99.6 million to 97 million years ago. rex and Giganotosaurus did not live at the same time, in the same place, or even in the same environment. Such a scenario would never have actually happened.
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