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T. Rex Dinosaur’s Bite Has Force of Three Cars | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Caption:

A giant chrome brushed aluminium skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus
(T-Rex) dinosaur (R), made by French sculptor and painter Philippe
Pasqua, stands at the pier of riverboat company Bateaux-Mouches on
June 12, 2013 in Paris, with the Eiffel tower in the background (L).
(Photo by Claire Lebertre/AFP Photo)


Washington, London- Researchers said a computer model based on the T. rex jaw muscle anatomy and analyses of living relatives like reptiles and birds showed its bite force measured about 3,630 kg, the strongest of any dinosaur ever estimated.

The force of this dinosaur’s bite equals the weight of three small cars.

Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist from Florida State University, said: “T. rex could bite through whatever it wanted, as long as it was made of flesh and bone”.

To measure the power of T. rex’s bite, researchers also calculated how it transmitted its bite force through its conical, 18-cm teeth, finding that it generated 30,300 kg per square cm of tooth pressure.

Bite marks on fossilized bones of dinosaurs like the horned Triceratops that lived alongside Tyrannosaurus some 66 million years ago in western North America indicated T. rex was a bone-cruncher. T. Rex, which was about 13 meters long and weighed about seven tons, had the ability to pulverize and eat bones.

Paleontologist Paul Gignac of the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences said: “Predators with bone-crunching abilities are able to exploit a high-risk, high-reward resource: the minerals that make up bone itself and the fatty marrow that is contained inside”.

This research concluded that T. rex possessed the greatest tooth pressure of any creature ever studied. For example, researchers estimated in 2012 an enormous croc called Deinosuchus, which lived a few million years before T. rex and weighed even more, had a bite strength of 10,400 kg.