In the 1993 religious cult classical Jurassic Park , a T. male monarch grapple to frighten off the bread and butter son of a bitch out of tiddler heroes Lex and Tim Murphy by casually ripping asunder their Ford Explorer like it ’s a flake of meat . It ’s a scene that crystallized the destructive power of this extinct apex predatory animal in the public consciousness — and as a unexampled subject highlights , it might not have been that inflated .
Monster film a’plenty have instruct us that T. rex was not a brute to be trifle with , but if you desire to lie with exactly how drive in you ’d be to find yourself view between the Cretaceous carnivore ’s tooth , you ’d need to carefully value the animal ’s pungency force . Not so easy for a beast that went out 66 million years ago , but that ’s incisively what a squad of Florida State University paleontologist has now done , using a combination of fossils , 3D reconstructions , and computer modeling .
The researchers estimate that T.rex chowed down with a bit force play of 8,000 pound , which is roughly twice the chomping potency of the saltwater crocodile , today ’s world champion biter . compound with an insanely in high spirits tooth pressure , the answer explicate how T. rex was capable to pulverize the os of other dinos to access their nutrient .
pearl crushing — uttermost osteophagy in the scientific idiom — is a trait show by just a handful of mammalian scavenger and predators today , include the spotted hyaena and the gray wolf . Osteophagy is almost unheard of in reptilian ; their recollective , conical teeth do n’t tend to clamp together to deliver the crushing forces needed to shatter ivory . And yet Gregory Erickson , FSU paleontologist and atomic number 27 - generator of thenew studypublished today in Scientific Reports , has long observed that the sting marks on the brutalized carcass of T.rex lunches indicate a bone - chewer .
“ One affair I noticed [ early on in my career ] is that T.rex was pulverizing off-white , ” Erickson tell apart Gizmodo , recalling a giant triceratops pelvis that “ reckon like it had been jaw up by some kind of ogre — some sort of jumbo hound . I was able to enter out it was T.rex by calculate at the bite marks . ”
To show that T.rex ’s teeth had what it took , Erickson , along with palaeontologist Paul Gignac , execute a comprehensive analytic thinking of the animal ’s bite , combining measurement from T.rex skull and tooth , high - resolution casts , and an anatomical model Gignac developed during grad schooltime to predict bite force in crocodilians based on their muscle system . Ultimately , the researchers estimated a T.rex could save some 8,000 British pound sterling of bite violence on average , roughly the weight of three humble automobile .
More significantly for osseous tissue crushing , the animal ’s tooth pressure — a measure of how forces are transmit through each tooth — reached a staggering 431,000 punt per straight inch , the researchers find . Together , high bit force and bone pressure let T.rex to practice into bones through repeated gnashing , eventually causing them to shatter or explode . allot to Erickson , T.rex probably used its os crushing tooth to access marrow and phosphate minerals . “ These animals were able to elicit nutrients from bone , ” he said .
It ’s not the first time scientist have attempted to measure T.rex ’s bite force-out , andsome previous estimateshave been even higher . Erickson think his figure , while buttoned-down , are more accurate , because they ’re based on scaling forces up from the muscles of crocodile , a close-fitting keep relative .
Eric Snively , vertebrate anatomist and fossilist at University of Wisconsin La Crosse who was not involve with the new inquiry , said it was “ a great report ” and agreed that the author are on the right track with their bite personnel estimates . “ They carefully reconstruct many muscles and accounted for crucial aspects of muscle computer architecture and physiology . ”
“ I ’m surprised at the high tooth pressures they discover for T. rex , because we usually consider the teeth to be blunt rather than super knifelike , ” Snively continue . “ However , their result is ordered with the dementedly robust teeth behind those terminal press clipping edge ; the dentition could handle the os - splinter forces . ”
Snively contribute that purification example of T.rex ’s nerve muscles might more or less increase the animal ’s bit force in the future , noting that “ it ’s potential that muscles in vainglorious dinosaurs could inherently produce more power / area , ” than the authors ’ crocodile - based models assume .
As for whether those bone - chip teeth could really rip through the body of a commando fomite ? Erickson would n’t go that far — yet . “ I ’m not indisputable the tooth could survive burn into metal , ” he said .
[ Scientific Reports ]
Correction : A previous version of this article submit that the study was lead by Florida International University paleontologists , the work was done primarily at Florida State University . Gizmodo regret the error .
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