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Palaeontology: Could the T. rex have weighed 15 tonnes?
The largest T. rex found may not be the largest that ever existed. ‘Some isolated bones and fragments indicate that there were larger individuals than those whose skeletons we have discovered so far,’ explains David Hone from Queen Mary University of London in a statement. The largest skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex found to date, known as Scotty, was discovered in Canada in 1991. When alive, this specimen was probably 13 metres long and weighed almost nine tonnes.
Researchers would have to dig up fossils for another 1000 years or so
Together with Jordan Mallon from the Canadian Museum of Nature, Hone reconstructed on the computer how large the largest T. rex of all time could have been. In comparison, Scotty looks small: the record T. rex could have weighed around 15 tonnes and been 15 metres long. The results of this study were published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
According to the study, around 2.5 billion individuals lived during the approximately 2.4 million years of Tyrannosaurus rex’s existence. However, only 84 reasonably complete skeletons have been discovered so far. It was therefore unclear whether the largest skeletons found to date actually belonged to the largest individuals of this species or whether there were much larger animals.
In order to estimate the maximum body size of the T. rex, the researchers simulated a population of 140 million animals, taking into account various factors such as growth rate and lifespan of the species. Sexual differences were also taken into account. According to the researchers’ calculations, fossils would have to be excavated for around 1,000 years to find a specimen belonging to the largest 0.01 per cent.
However, it is extremely unlikely that a skeleton will ever be found that corresponds to the calculated size. According to the computer models, the fossils already discovered belong to the 99th percentile of the body mass of T. rex – in other words, they are as large as the largest one per cent of all living animals.
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