Scientists have come up with one more reason to be amazed by Tyrannosaurus rex. When the huge carnivorous dinosaur took a bite, it did so with an awe-inspiring force equal to the weight of three small cars, enabling it to crunch bones with ease.
Researchers on Wednesday said a computer model based on the T. rex jaw muscle anatomy and analyses of living relatives like crocodilians and birds showed its bite force measured about 8,000 pounds (3,630 kg), the strongest of any dinosaur ever estimated.
"T. rex could pretty much bite through whatever it wanted, as long as it was made of flesh and bone," said Florida State University paleobiologist Gregory Erickson.
Given the size of the creature - and the size of what it presumably tried to eat - it makes sense that it evolved those kind of muscles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:11PM
According to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120316093427.htm [sciencedaily.com]
Largest crocodiles weigh about 1000 kgs where are the t rex weighs about 5500 kg, so there's much more bite per kg to the croc!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)
How many football stadiums is that?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:06PM
3.6 libraries of congress per endzone.
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:02PM (2 children)
To be scientificly relevant the correct measurement would be 2.9755 GPa, equal to 297.54 kN/cm² which is the measure that will be the make or break for any bone of flesh caught in the jaw. For comparison 240–620 MPa is used in water jet cutter and 18 GPa is the pressure that was needed for the first commercially successful synthesis of diamond. Car crushers work with 21 MPa so it would have easily "eaten" those had it been so inclined.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @05:49PM (1 child)
1 kgf/cm^2 = 98.067 kilopascals
3630 kilogram-force/centimeter^2 ~= 356 megapascal ~= 35600 newton/centimeter^2
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 27 2017, @10:52PM
In the referenced article [reuters.com] it says:
So it's 30 300 * 9.82 newton per square cm.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @04:18PM (1 child)
As the strongest dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex deserves the name rex, so now it is our duty as Social Science Warriors to strip the T rex of its title. King of the dinosaurs is a patriarchal supremacist and must be taken down a notch because the name has unfortunate associations to kings and tyrants and gives poor human children an inferiority complex. T rex shall henceforth be known as Terrorist McTerrorface.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @12:36PM
Tyrannosaurus Regina ?