Could T. rex chase down a car?
Only in dumb movies. A recent study using computers to simulate running mechanics concluded that T. rex couldn’t run more than about 18 mph. Other researchers estimate the top speed may have been only about 10 mph. How sharp were T. rex’s senses? In the movie “Jurassic Park,” a T. rex couldn’t find people huddling right in front of its nose as long as they didn’t move. As if. Tyrannosaurs had the most sensitive noses of all meat-eating dinosaurs, according to scientists at the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum who used CT scans of skulls to estimate the size of brain olfactory bulbs dedicated to sniffing out prey. Skull and brain anatomy suggest that tyrannosaurs also had forward-facing eyes with sensitive, binocular color vision. What do T. rex and chickens have in common? The wish bone, or furcula, is the most obvious shared trait. But Harvard researchers last year analyzed a bit of protein recovered from a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex and compared it to pro
