Number of T-rexes that lived in North America could have been in billions syfy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from syfy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
5 days ago in Features
FILE - In this Tuesday, March 7, 2006 file photo, life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex models are unloaded for a dinosaur exhibition in Potsdam, Germany. A study released on Thursday, April 15, 2021 calculates that 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex prowled North America over a couple million years or so, with maybe 20,000 at any given time. (AP Photo/Sven Kaestner) Photo: Associated Press
By SETH BORENSTEIN AP Science Writer
One Tyrannosaurus rex seems scary enough. Now picture 2.5 billion of them. That’s how many of the fierce dinosaur king probably roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years, a new study finds.
Study: 2 5 billion T rex roamed Earth, but not all at once more1049.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from more1049.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Study says 2.5 billion T. rex roamed Earth
Population existed over a couple million years By SETH BORENSTEIN, Associated Press
Published: April 20, 2021, 6:00am
Share: Life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex models are unloaded for a dinosaur exhibition in 2006 in Potsdam, Germany. A study released on Thursday calculates that 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex prowled North America over a couple million years or so, with maybe 20,000 at any given time. (Sven Kaestner/Associated Press)
One Tyrannosaurus rex seems scary enough. Now picture 2.5 billion of them. That’s how many of the fierce dinosaur king probably roamed Earth over the course of a couple million years, a new study finds.
About 20,000 adult
Tyrannosaurus rexes probably lived at any one time, give or take a factor of 10, a new study suggests.
The number is in the ballpark of what most researchers guessed, but what’s few paleontologists had fully grasped, says Charles Marshall, is what that means: some 2.5 billion lived and died over the approximately 2 1/2 million years the dinosaur walked the Earth.
Until now, no one has been able to compute population numbers for long-extinct animals, and George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most influential paleontologists of the last century, felt that it couldn’t be done.
“When I hold a fossil in my hand, I can’t help wondering at the improbability that this very beast was alive millions of years ago…”