New T.Rex Study Suggests The Dinosaur Might Be WAY Bigger

Prehistoric Times has an article on some paleontology science where T.rex might be way bigger than we thought. In fact 70% bigger which could make for a great Jurassic Park idea some day. This study is fun because of the Giganotosaurus, Spinosaurus and other theropod dinosaur research that constantly attempts to one up the king of the Dinos.

#Dinosaurs #JurassicPark #Science

A Very Special Thanks to InGen Executives Brett Rouleau, Daniel Cole, Christopher Siehda, Jonathan Murphy, Charles Rix, Jack Barnett, George Albott, Luis (Blamo_Guy) Santiago, Rob Langridge, David Bell, Flower Bro, The Sandman, Travis Whatley, Bailey Smith, Alexandre Raison, Cobalttheunicorn, Conner Losco, Cory Lydick, Greg Thornton, Timothy, Chris Stoddard, Cassandra Castaneda, Casey Morris, Andrew Fallon, Sam Lowe, TIMAN, The Melting Squad, FAMOUSLASTWORDS, Colin Paul, BigDanFTW, Matt S, Eddie Hoplight, Nicholas Brown, Verlando Brown, Rob Tallman, Balcora, Nicholas Roque, Bryson Knox, Kevin McDonald, Robert Messing, Brianna Christie, Ben Wilders, Robbie Brown, Joel Elizondo, Jacob Hagelstein, Ryan Moser, Ellis Ozley, Hunter Brown, Isaac Rovenko, Lee Hallewell, Kboss, Patrick Perry, Steven, Mark Rainbow, Andy Lucas, Richard Humbert, Michael Mendez, Christian Macias, Zachariah Shadlock, Adam Hooper, Steveson, Kane Southby, Gerry the Bary, Ari Rosenbaum, Bobby James, JW-Gojifan, John O'Dea, Ryan Seavey, BurakkuRoze, Will Luna, Joseph, Cody Castille, Ian Darsh, Michael Mangione, David L Kisling, FrostyJ, Samuel David Smith, Kyle Rowley, John O'Dea, Will Byrd, MooreFourMe, Ros Geal, Thomas Stonehouse-Burt, That_Clyde_Guy, Jacob Thomas, Phil Ken Sebben, That_Clyde_Guy, GoldsboroTSG, Matthew Smith, Nathan Gribble, Simon Thivierge, John Kuruc, Darklion53, Augustus Bismarck, Pierce Young, king delirious, petemesquite, Wesley Woo and Tyler Shepard, Devon L Dusseau, MustardBus, Omar Miguel Sanane, Clayton Milstead, Devon La Force, Matthew Lariviere, Seth Mcdaniel, Jurassic Jai, Matthew Lariviere, Kevin Baird, Omar Miguel Sanane, Ashlee Tilly, Stan Marsh, Mathew Lortie, Devin Mabe and Eric Loos ! As well as my GAME WARDENS Paul Chandler, Tyrannical Rex, Doughnut Guy, Martin Ipsen, Libby MacEachern, Andrew Wilmot, Bledsitter, Mulluns, Lauren Hutton, Chase Acker, Auraya Frost, Roger Coleman, Kyle Oxley, RyanHamster, Mike Wu, Lisa Kay, Melissa Rocha, Steven Ray Morris, Keith Powell, Larry Gillis, Cass Wart, Jared Meza, Mark Davies, Jordan J Robles, Brittany Toliver, Logan Howlett, Saturn Sky, Chris Webb, James Luong, Raul Luis-Solorio, Derek Hazen, Ryan LeBrecht, Brandon Bowers, Paolo Caday, Luke Davis, Matthew Buffington, Alex, Luke Osteen, Ted Dino, Jon Robinson, Aaron McLean, Joel Del Toro, Brandon Lade, Stefan Siemers, Jaidabecca, ZombieSalamander, JoyoSnooze, Mike Sherlock, Aaron McLean, Timothy, Killian Bottorf, Chris Martinez, Sam Bordas, Jarret Austin, Nick Cangelosi (CHRONO), Adam Johnson, Jonathan Lotton, Gregor Mundell, Billy Green, Josh Chambers, Pedro Passamani, Xplodin Apple, Chris Risdal, Graydon Greenlaw, Jonathan Wilson, Steve Steranka, Brian Ochoa, Alex Holbrook, Steven G, Amanda Sweatt, Stan Marsh, Adam Dryden, SP4RK INDUSTRIES, Xander, James Dowling-Healey, Blake Hendrix, Cole McCalmon, Philip Neumeier, Lola Lopez and Ivan Santiago! Seriously, you guys are awesome!

[kalevipoeg]

Paleontologist here (actually working on some Tyrannosaur related research currently - can't say what yet). I've maintained for a very long time that trying to come up with a maximum size constraint for a species known from a few dozen decent skeletons - much less those species known from only one or two incomplete individuals - is a lot like trying to come up with the maximum size for a human being based on a few dozen skeletons that are either male or female. The fact is, that's a very hard thing to do, and that's not even accounting for the difficulty in accurately reconstructing exactly how much flesh and fat and everything else went over the skeleton. Recall that it wasn't that long ago that everyone was saying T. rex was a 5 to 7 ton predator - that has now shifted to mature forms being closer to the 10 ton mark and that *still* doesn't account for exceptional individuals. If you were to take 3 dozen human skeletons out of the ground after 66 million years and try to reconstruct the mass and height for our species you'd be likely to have some idea of generally how big adults got but statistically you'd be very likely to miss pretty much all of the really big individuals or even the moderately big ones.

For instance: the average western man is 175 cm or 5'9" tall and, if not obese, should weigh around 160 to 170 lbs. Your odds of the adult male skeletons you found belonging to men in this size range are extremely high - at least 70% of all men are 5'10" or under, and something like 85% of men are under 6 foot. At 6'1" you are taller than about 90% to 92% of men and by 6'2" you're taller than around 95% of men...by 6'4" you're taller than 99% of men on earth. So your odds of finding even a 6'4" guy out of a couple dozen skeletons are next to none since out of 100 men, less than one on average will be at this height. By 6'6" you're talking about micropercentages. Even for myself at 6'2", I'm taller than about 94 or 95% of men on the planet - and out of a sample of 100 fully grown western men - not even a global sample where the average height is only 5'7" - only about 5 could be realistically expected to be a full 6'2". Even with a sample of 1, 000 individuals you'd only come up with 50 guys - enough to fit in one classroom. If your sample size is, say, 25 guys....then you have a 5% chance of a 6'2" individual - which means MAYBE you'll find one 6'2" skeleton in that group of 25. Maybe. You might not even find one. You'd be likely to find between 17 and 18 men that are 5'10" and under out of those 25, though.

And that's not even the extreme of human size. That's only "tall" territory. We're not even talking about the super-tall guys that everyone asks "how's the air up there?" - the Shaqs, the Yao Mings, the Robert Pershing Wadlows of the world. They DO occur. It's very rare in the population but there ARE 7 foot men walking around on this planet - they're effectively giants. There's a handful of giants that even approach or slightly exceed 8 feet. For other animals there are examples of gigantism, too. The typical african bush elephant bull comes in at maybe 5 tons or so - but one individual was documented that weighed well over twice that and stood a staggering, mammoth-like 12' at the shoulder. Gigantism is real and it applies across the animal kingdom.

So almost certainly there would be exceptional Rexes that dwarfed the others. I think a 15 ton individual is entirely within the realm of possibility - maybe even a bit more than that - somewhere in the 15-17 ton range. A maximum length of somewhere in the area of 50 to 55 feet and a height at the hips of around 16 or 17 feet (large rexes that we've found can be around 13' at the hips depending on posture) and a skull length of well over 6 feet are entirely possible.

Generally an adult T. rex has a skull length around 1/8th the total body length. This means that a 6 foot skull could reasonably be expected to belong to an animal around 48 feet long and a 2 meter / 6'6" skull would belong to a 52 foot individual - about 10 feet or 3 meters longer than our current idea of a large T. rex. Their mass tends to be - based on recent estimates anyway - equivalent to about a ton for every 4.2 feet (about 1.25 meters) - just under 10 tons roughly for a 42' Scotty for instance - so for a 52 foot individual we'd expect nothing less than somewhere in the 12 to 13 ton range at a minimum, with possibility for higher weights if they get beefier the bigger they get (which is actually likely given they'd need increasingly more muscle mass to drive such a large body forward - no spindly chicken legs here).

A 52' individual would represent roughly a 25% increase in size over the current largest rexes - keep that in mind. So an individual that size would be to other rexes what someone around Shaq's size would be to the average 5'7" to 5'9" man. Mass of course depends on a lot of factors - 6'8" World's Strongest Man Brian Shaw for instance comes in at over 400 lbs - more than 200% what the average man's healthy weight SHOULD be - and about a foot taller than average. Mass depends on a lot of factors as mentioned is is particularly hard to dial in on an exact.

One constraint of course to growth is food availability, competition on the way up to that size and metabolism as well as time and growth rate. During their fastest growing years we know that T. rex gained something on the order of a ton a year - which is staggeringly fast - and we also know that in general the really elderly rexes that are clearly very matured individuals tend to be around 30 years old at the most. So T. rex lived fast and died young. This means that there's only a certain amount of TIME for a rex to attain a given size - which means either it has to live longer than normal or it has to have a higher-than-normal growth rate, or a little of both. If we assume continuous growth of a ton a year, there *is* time enough for an exceptional rex in that time frame to reach 15 or 16 tons - but probably not a whole lot more given the time constraint and other factors. If we were talking about a 20 ton T. rex, it would have to have a bizarre growth rate or indeterminate growth and an abnormally long and injury-free life, so we can bet on it being below that.

My gut feeling is that 15 to 17 tons likely represents the maximum attainable mass not only for T. rex but any theropod, and this is for a number of reasons. Without question, 12 or 13 tons is almost assured to have happened from time to time, with 9 to 11 tons probably representing *most* robust, fully matured older rexes. In any case even a 52', 13 ton T. rex would be an absolute monster - that's about a third heavier than Scotty, way heavier than the JP T. rex, taller, longer, everything - and it would likely have a bite force to match. What I'm saying is that such an individual would absolutely annihilate any of the theropods that have been pushing them around in the JP and JW films. It wouldn't even be a fight.

[byzantineroman]

Even at its current size, it's an incredibly formidable creature. 35-70% bigger would be absolutely insane!

[NioNerd]

The more we learn about T. rex, the more I think how badass and awesome the animal is.

[NathanSpies]

T-Rex: how often will I always be drastically changing???

Science: Yes

[benjaminhollon]

Makes sense, the average male human is like 5'8", but the tallest was like 8'11", which is like 63% bigger or something. So it makes sense that there could be an individual much bigger than average.

[KlaytonFioriti]

Hey guys! Check out Gary’s paleontology channel in the description where he plans to do some cool stuff in the future!

[kevinprehm]

It's funny how each new study reveals how drastically we were underestimating T.rex

[southparkstanmarshofficial]

T.Rex will always be my all time favorite dinosaur

[donch]

I can’t imagine how a t-rex would be if actually was 70% bigger. That’s a very big size difference 😅

[jg]

I’ve seen some stuff about the Rex being one of, if not the smartest dinosaurs, best eye sight of any animal ever, one of the strongest bite forces to ever exist and some of the best sense of smells, now make it 70% bigger? It really is the ultimate predator.

[oscarstainton]

I'd be open to seeing more videos about the paleontology and science behind the dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park/World franchise. I enjoyed this quite a lot!

A T. rex that could have weighed over fifteen tonnes is IMMENSE, and about as heavy as some average sized sauropods, so maybe the Rex was able to take on an Alamosaurus solo. We idolize T. rex today, but I really believe that early humans would have worshipped living Rexes like gods among the smaller species.

In fact, if Universal feel like keeping the Jurassic franchise going they could quite simply follow singular animals at different points of time. Whether its on the islands or on the mainland while adjusting to the wider world. When it comes to Rexy, I give a lot of benefit of the doubt due to her age. But a new specimen to be as big as the new estimates would honestly keep my interest!!

[medikor]

This really reminds me of the major theme in The Lost World: how scientist and experts are so closed minded and can't even imagine that they could be as far off as they believe their predecessors were. Crighton was very ahead of his time and it's a shame his lesson of humility goes unheeded.

It would be hilarious if we go full circle and all the outdated ideas we had of dinosaurs become the norm again. As someone who grew up with the T Rex walking upright, I would love that! lol

[kylgrv]

Regardless if T. rex is now suggested to have gotten even bigger than what we know as of now, I still see the beast as one of the most formidable creatures to have ever walked the Earth, and one of my all-time favorite dinosaurs. This news is really fascinating to hear about, and it makes me curious on what other news we might get for other dinosaurs.

[karsonhinojosa]

If that's the case, imagine a giant Rex in the new movies

[PressureDMZ]

Being a painter by trade, I can picture the size of a 12-14 foot T-Rex. I can compare that to painters trestles that we all use, but a Rex that could be 70% larger then that had just absolutely blown my mind! Now I’m going to be thinking about this all day, thanks Klayton!

[bladewarm]

Being honest, the reason mentioned at 1:53 would apply to MANY other theropod species

[azhdarchidae]

to see all these typically jurassic park or pop culture dinosaurs themed channels make scientific content and knowing what theyre talking about is very nice

[usagibun]

The older I get and the more I learn in life, the more I realize that neither I or the rest of us really know anything at all.

[brycevo]

Truly the king of the dinosaurs, when they ruled the earth

[lead_zealot]

Man, I got Prehistoric Times as kid, such a nostalgia trip haha. Might have to get back into it. It'd be interesting to see how this study applies to other dinosaurs as well. As a complete and total T. rex fanboy, I'm always happy to see new evidence that the King was even more OP than previously thought