Everything we believed about the fearsome Tyrannosaurus Rex is probably untrue, says a leading paleontologist at world-famous Yale University.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, assistant curator of the Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT, says our usual picture of of T-Rex—a mad, rampaging carnivore with a million long, sharp teeth, and funny little Thalidomide hands—actually bears no resemblance at all to the great dinosaur who lived a million years ago and has long been the favorite of the younger set.
G. Evelyn Hutchinson
“No resemblance?” Professor Hutchinson corrects himself. “Well the funny little Thalidomide arms, that’s probably right. And he had some long, sharp teeth, though probably not a million of them. And a carnivore, yeah, I think he was probably a carnivore. You know, the way a lot of birds are carnivores. That means they eat meat.”
But T-Rex ate other things as well. “Yes! Avocados, very fond of avocados,” Prof. Hutchinson assures us. “And eel, he liked eel. Who doesn’t? We have reason to believe he liked smoked eel. We found eel bones by an ancient campfire that may have been kept by a tribe of T-Rexes. And wild rice. We have found evidence of wild-rice grinding in his back teeth, and remnants of rice in his fossilized spoor. If he’d stuck around a little longer, T-Rex could have invented sushi!”
Tyrannosaurus Rex could have invented sushi.
Most surprisingly, Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose name actually means Thunder Lizard, was a gentle creature and attentive parent to his offspring. Mommy T-Rex typically laid between three and six eggs in a clutch. A clutch is a kind of nest-like basket which the T-Rex parents built when they settled down to have a family.
The baby T-Rex hatchling was not as gentle as it appears.
Only Mommy could lay the eggs, but Daddy and Mommy took turns sitting on them. Usually only one or two hatched, because the others got smashed from all that sitting! But then the one or two babies grew up quickly, as they had lots to eat. Mommy and Daddy T-Rex took turns gathering nuts and animals for the children’s dinner.
While one of them hunted and gathered food, the other parent protected the offspring from the many predators that thrived in the prehistoric world, and loved to sink their teeth into juicy fat baby T-Rexes!
“They mated for life, you know,” Prof. Hutchinson reports. “Like pigeons.”
