One of my favourite dinosaurs is T-Rex! Let’s discover five terrific T-Rex facts for kids.
The word originated from the Greek and Latin language. ‘Tyrannosaurus’ comes from the Greek words meaning ‘tyrant lizard’, while the word ‘rex’ means ‘king’ in Latin. The Tyrannosaurus rex, or T-Rex for short, is probably the most recognisable dinosaur of them all.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex was a carnivore. This meant it only ate meat. The T-Rex had a set of 50 big and sharp teeth in its mouth, this allowed it to eat meat much easier and quicker. The T-Rex has the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur found to this date and that of a T-Rex. The T-Rex tooth is estimated to have been around 30cm long, the length of a ruler. It had the strongest bite of any land animal to ever exist and with one bite, it could rip off a hundred pounds of meat!
The T-Rex lived during the late Cretaceous Period, which was roughly 65 million years ago. Most fossils have been found in the USA and Canada. The T. Rex was a very tall beast which reached heights of up to 6 metres and 12 metres in length.
Scientists believe the Tyrannosaurus rex could run at speeds of up to 20 kilometres per hour. It is safe to say we humans could not outrun a T-Rex. One of the T-Rex’s most notable features is its two tiny clawed arms, which were less than one metre in length. It is believed that the shortness of their hands was because it would take less energy to support such small arms and the likeliness of breaking them was less.
The T-rex was super smart, it had a brain twice as big as those of the other giant dinosaurs. The skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex measured up to 1.5 metres in length. This made room for the T-Rex’s huge brain. The size of the T-Rex’s brain suggests that it might have been more intelligent than other dinosaurs. It also gave the T-Rex stronger senses including great eyesight, hearing and smell. This was a great advantage when hunting prey.
More than 20 almost-complete T-Rex skeletons have been found so far. The largest T-Rex skeleton ever found was nicknamed Sue and it was discovered in South Dakota. In 1997, the T-Rex skeleton was sold to a museum in Chicago for around 5 million pounds. Sue is a 90% complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil skeleton. It was named after its discoverer Sue Hendrickson. It is the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date.
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about T-Rex as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic this dinosaur is, you can move on to learn about other dinosaurs like: Iguanodon, Gallimimus, Giganotosaurus and Allosaurus.
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