The complete T. rex

247 Pages·1993·30.387 MB·English

by  John R Horner, Don Lessem

THE COMPLETE
T.rex
by John R. Horner and Don Lessem
SIMON & SCHUSTER
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY TOKYO SINGAPORE
SIMON & SCHUSTER
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
Copyright © 1993 by John R. Horner
and Don Lessem
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are
registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Designed by Deborah Perugi
Manufactured in the United States of America
13579 108642
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horner, John R.
The complete T. rex: how stunning new discoveries are
changing our understanding of the world's most famous
dinosaur / John R. Horner and Don Lessem.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Tyrannosaurus rex. I. Lessem, Don. II. Title.
QE862.S3H66 1993
567.9'7—dc20 93-211 CIP
ISBN 0-671-74185-3
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
*Zhis book was made possible by the work of a host of others
who have researched Tyrannosaurus rex and its world and
informed our studies at the Museum of the Rockies. Bill Abler,
Ken Carpenter, Bill Clemens, Phil Currie, Jim Farlow, Don
Glut, Leo Hickey, Kirk Johnson, Ralph Molnar, Mark Norell,
and Scott Wing kindly reviewed the manuscript in part or
whole in its roughest form, and Bob Bakker, Harley Garbani,and
Peter Larson provided valuable comments along the way.
Equally deserving of thanks are the members of the Mu
seum of the Rockies staff, Pat Leiggi, Carrie Ancell, Bob
Harmon, and the rest of the field crew, preparators, and
graduate students—a uniquely skilled group.
Special thanks go also to designers Deb Perugi and Adam
Kelley and the many talented artists who have supplied
work for this book, including Kris Elingsen, Brian Franczak,
Doug Henderson, Kit Mathers, Pat Ortega, Greg Paul, and
Matt Smith; Photographer Bruce Selyam; filmmaker Mark
Davis; NOVA producer Paula Apsell; publishing guru
Bernice Colt; copyeditor Mary Anne Stewart, indexer
Miriam Witlin, proofreader Sydney Fishman, and know-it-
all George Olshevsky.
Thanks, too, to editor Bob Bender and his able assistant,
Johanna Li. And last, but not least, we thank our families for
their patience with us when we're messing around with
dinosaurs instead of them. We're glad we can do both.
to the Wankel family
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Will the Real T. rex Please Stand Up? PAGE 9
CHAPTER 1
How to Find a T. rex PAGE I 3
CHAPTER 2
The Dig PAGE 33
CHAPTER 3
Discovering T. rex PAGE 57
CHAPTER 4
The Image of T. rex:
The Making of a Monster PAGE 79
CHAPTER 5
The Bare Bones PAGE 99
CHAPTER 6
T. rex and Family PAGE I 23
CHAPTER 7
The World of T. rex PAGE 143
CHAPTER 8
Lifestyles of the Huge and Famous PAGE 167
CHAPTER 9
T. rex: Predator or Scavenger? PAGE 203
EPILOGUE
More Tyrannnosaurus rexes PAGE 221
RESOURCE GUIDE PAGE 225
BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGE 227
INDEX PAGE 231
CREDITS - PAGE 237
T. REX BATTLING
AN EDMONTONIA
BY BRIAN FRANCZAK
THE COMPLETE T. REX
I N T R O D U C T I ON
WILL THE REAL TYRANNOSAURUS
REX PLEASE STAND UP?
WESTERN NORTH AMERICA, 65 MILLION YEARS AGO.
The last of the dinosaurs are on the move. They're roaming
inland and along the margins of a big, shallow inland sea.
These animals are huge, many more than twenty feet long.
But there are far fewer kinds of them than there were 10
million years before, when the seas were wider and the
temperatures milder.
Huge herds of horned dinosaurs and giant duckbills
tromp across the land, heading north in summer, south
in winter. They munch on ferns and flowering plants.
As they go, they're bleating and honking to each other.
The noise can be deafening and the smell overpower
ing. Here and there smaller dome-headed dinosaurs
browse, males butting heads in loud collisions. Squat
armored dinosaurs, the size of small tanks, lumber
about. They're scarfing up low-growing plants. Scurry
ing about beneath the dinosaurs' feet are our ancestors,
insect-munching mammals. The mammals are snacks
for nimble, man-sized dinosaurs. Other, bigger dinosaur
predators are on the loose, among them a pygmy
tyrannosaur. This killer is only fifteen feet long, with
quick feet and good eyesight.
But all these animals live in terror of one of the
greatest carnivores ever—Tyrannosaurus rex. Sud
denly it approaches, rushing in from hiding in the
underbrush, carrying its tail high as its thickly muscled
legs pump in long, narrow, swift strides. The herds
scatter, exposing the young, the old, and the frail,
which lag behind. The hunter corners one sickly Tricer-
atops, which turns, bucks its head, and flashes its
menacing horns at the predator. The killer's huge maw
opens, revealing gleaming serrated fangs the size and
shape of bananas, poised to tear into a hapless adver
sary.
Lowering its head, T. rex chomps down on the back
of the horned dinosaur. T. rex's stubby, powerful claws
lock into the tough hide of the victim, securing it while
jaws and teeth shake the flailing prey, tearing away
huge, bloody hunks of flesh.
This T. rex is fast, and nimble. It might hunt in packs
as well as alone, butting heads with its rivals. To kill, it
leaps out to kick or pinion its prey with a massive hind
leg or crunch it with a lethal bite. It is one fleet-footed,
mean, killing son-of-a-gun.
Another day, another imagined view of T. rex. This is
an equally graceful monster. It, too, is fast enough to
catch prey, but rather than get into a nasty struggle to
kill its dinner, it uses its monstrous jaws to tear huge
hunks of meat from the many carcasses littering the
landscape. It's the vulture of its day: a huge, efficient
leftover-eater.
Which of these T. rexes comes closer to the truth?
Either one, depending on how you interpret the evi
dence. Each vision of T. rex is based on reasonable
inferences, unlike the antiquated vision of T. rex as a fat
and sluggish cold-blooded reptile. Each of these mod
ern scenarios is based on the best information we have
about T. rex. That information is growing fast. In the
past few years, we've found out more about T. rex then
we ever knew before. My co-workers and I at the
Museum of the Rockies dug up one of the two most
complete T. rexes of all in 1990 and found some
surprises, among them that T. rex's front arms, long
imagined to be puny and useless, weren't weak after all.
We'll tell you here what we paleontologists now
know about T. rex, how we dug out bones and figured
out how T. rex looked and acted. But for all we know
about T. rex, much more remains a mystery. Some
lO THE COMPLETE T. REX
questions may never be answered. Others require us to
speculate, to make reasonable guesses based on the
good information we do have.
Some people don't like to hear scientists use the word
speculate. They think science is all hard data and certain
answers. It's not, especially when you've got a science
with as many gaps and as little data as we have for the
evolution and behavior of dinosaurs.
It's as if we're detectives investigating a murder, only
we weren't there, and we don't have the culprit or
much of the evidence. Speculation is healthy, very
healthy, as long as it is grounded in evidence. Where
you get into trouble is when you start believing the
speculation simply because it appeals to you.
Dinosaurs are awesome. All of us would really like to
know what they looked like, how they acted and
moved. That leads to speculation. That doesn't mean
any speculation we make is good science. If we do
speculate, we need to identify it as speculation, not fact.
And in our speculation we need to try for the neatest,
most parsimonious solution to fit the facts we do have.
Since there is speculation in all science, it is important
to understand that just because one particular scientist
says this is what happened, it isn't necessarily so. That's
only his or her speculation.
Science is constantly changing. We're always learning
new things. The first person who comes up with an idea
always has the least information that will ever be known
about that idea. But we can never solve all the mystery.
We'll never know the absolute, complete truth about
dinosaurs. Certainly not about T. rex. In the first ninety
years that we knew of T. rex's existence, scientists had
uncovered only eight skeletons of the animal, none of
them more than 60 percent complete.
Now that's all changed. Here's how and why.
INTRODUCTION 1 1