admin Picture this: two dinosaurs with giant teeth and majestic figures are circling each other, threatening to knock each other out. Each was the most successful predator of their time. In a fierce dinosaur duel – Tyrannosaurus rex versus Giganotosaurus carolinii – which one will survive?
Both species enter the ring with experience as apex predators hunting impressive prey.T. rex is believed to have eaten armored triceratops and duck-billed dinosaurs, while Giganotosaurus may have destroyed the largest land animals of all time: long-necked, sauropod dinosaurs. possibly 10 times the size of a sauropod dinosaur. Hunter. None of these dinosaurs would have been an easy meal. So what would happen if two fearsome Cretaceous carnivores clashed?
A battle between the two is depicted in Jurassic World Dominion; but the winner benefits from the help of the third dinosaur. However, beyond a blockbuster movie, will the famous tyrant lizard T. rex prevail? Or will Giganotosaurus, which fictional paleontologist Alan Grant calls “the largest carnivore the world has ever seen,” triumph?
Such a scenario would never have actually happened. T. rex and Giganotosaurus did not live at the same time, in the same place, or even in the same environment. Both theropod dinosaurs roamed the planet during the Cretaceous period, but Giganotosaurus lived about 99.6 million to 97 million years ago. T. rex came on the scene about 30 million years later, at the very end of the age of the dinosaurs. Giganotosaurus, whose genus name translates to “giant southern lizard,” stalked the arid, hot desert of what is now Argentina, while T. rex enjoyed the cooler, wetter environment at the edge of lakes and shallow seas in North America.
But contrasting the two helps highlight their differences, says Thomas Holtz, anassistantprofessorof vertebrate paleontology at the University of Maryland who studies tyrannosaurs and their movements.know. This type of thought experiment couldprovideinsightinto how these creatures evolvedthemselves to become distinctand highly successful predators.
Some of thesedifferentfeaturescan be beneficial in noisysituations. But in a head-to-head fight, there are unlikely to be clearchampions and underdogs, says Kat Schroeder, a paleoecologist and postdoctoral research associate at Yale University.
“They’re not fighter planes,” she said.“Wecannot say that this one has an absolute top speed. Theyare animals. And theseare animals that lived 30 million years apart on different continents. Theyare separated by 150 million years of evolution [since their last commonancestor].
Holtz agrees that it could be any dinosaur’s game, despite admitting professional and personal bias toward tyrannosaurs (when he was 3, he wanted to grow up to be one). “Both of them are big predators adapted to killing very large prey,” he says. “If either of them managed to get a good bite onto the other one first, they’re probably going to win.”
What’s in a bite?
T. rex and Giganotosaurus can be described as “head hunter theropods,” Schroeder says. They both had “teeny, tiny little arms and giant heads,” she says, “so they’re probably not going to be pulling and scratching at one another.” Kicking is also out, because their feet would probably be too heavy to be of use in a fight. So there’s only one remaining option with any teeth. “They’re basically going to walk up to one another and try to grab each other with their giant mouths,” she says.
Both predators’ bites are vicious in different ways. T. rex can deliver the most skull-crushing of chomps, while Giganotosaurus’ bite leverages sharp, blade-like teeth to slash its prey’s flesh.
T. rex’s bite force is “almost off the scale,” says Holtz. The lowest estimates for an adult’s bite force are around 34.5 kilonewtons, he says, “which is twice as strong as the bite of a saltwater crocodile, the largest reptilian predator of today.”
Several adaptations in a T. rex’s head enable that smashing crunch. For one, the tyrant lizard has a long, deep snout made up of thick jaw bones, with very deeply rooted teeth. From above the gums, T. rex and Giganotosaurus would’ve appeared to have the same size teeth. But the roots of T. rex’s teeth, Holtz says, were double those of a Giganotosaurus tooth, which could be around 8 inches in total length. The largest known T. rex teeth reach 12 inches, and they’re built for impact with a round, thick shape. “T. rex has a jackhammer for a mouth,” Schroeder says.
The T. rex’s snout was also made up of somewhat flexible bones, Schroeder says, which can be an advantage for a big bite. “A little bit of springiness allows you to bite really, really hard without breaking your own face.”
Giganotosaurus, on the other hand, had a more forceful nip at the front of its mouth, with a long and slender snout about three times as long as it was tall. Its sharp, blade-like teeth were better at cutting than chomping down. Giganotosaurus teeth could ably slice through meat and might have been able to cause a lot of damage with a small nip.
But these dinosaurs likely wouldn’t just take turns biting each other, even locked in a cage fight. Their body size and nimbleness would also come into play.
Agility of the fighters
Jurassic Park’s Alan Grant was incorrect when he said Giganotosaurus was the largest carnivore ever to roam the Earth (that crown goes to Spinosaurus), but it was likely larger than a T. rex—at least in length. Giganotosaurus was probably about 45 to 47 feet long, while the largest T. rex specimen reached nearly 42 feet long (nicknamed “Scotty,” its bones reside at Canada’s Royal Saskatchewan Museum). Both stood about 20 feet tall, and Giganotosaurus may have had a few tons of mass on T. rex, but estimates for their maximum masses are both upward of 9 tons.
Still, it’s unlikely that such a small size difference would give one dinosaur an edge over the other, says Holtz. What might have put T. rex in the lead, he says, was its weight distribution and resulting agility.
T. rex’s weight is concentrated toward its middle, while Giganotosaurus is “more long and slab-like throughout its body,” he says. Holtz and colleagues calculated that a T. rex could rotate its body and twist in place twice as well as other dinosaurs of a similar mass, thanks in part due to massive hip bones and muscles. The pyramid-shaped ankle bones of a T. rex also may have offered more stability for maneuvering than a Giganotosaurus’s boxier ankles, Schroeder says. “T. rex might have been able to corner a little bit better.”
Two aspects of tyrannosaurus’s evolution might explain these adaptations, Holtz suggests. T. rex’s ancestors were smaller—the ones that were around when Giganotosaurus roamed Earth were “basically dinosaurian coyotes,” he says. Or perhaps they evolved these traits to take down sophisticated prey. Triceratops, for example, was “one of the most heavily armed herbivores in Earth history,” he says, and duck-billed dinosaurs had one of the largest brain-to-body size ratios of any herbivorous dinosaur. T. rex had a bigger brain than Giganotosaurus, Holtz says, probably because it had to hunt speedier, more agile prey.
Giganotosaurus brains were half the size. “You don’t have to have a lot of focus if you’re going after walking walls of meat,” Holtz says. They came from a long line of giant predatory dinosaurs. Their “basic body plan” prepared them to hunt “long, slow-moving” herbivores, such as stegosaurs and sauropods.
However, Schroeder explains, defeating a sauropod that lived in herds and could weigh up to 80 tons would not have been easy. Even taking down a small herbivore is difficult. “You can’t rush into a herd of elephants just to catch a baby elephant,” she said. “You will be facing one of these large animals. »
Maybe this is where the sharp bite came in handy for Giganotosaurus, Holtz said.Maybe it could deliver a deadly bite quickly, he said, or maybe its blade-like teeth could weaken large prey, allowing predators to track them down. and kill it at the right time.
Perhaps this is how Giganotosaurus could also have been bitten by T. rex in the first place. Tyrant lizards have both eyes on the front of their faces, providing better depth perception, Holtz said. But Giganotosaurus’s eyes, turned more to the sides, gave a better view of its body.The southern giant lizard could sneak up on the T. rex, sinking its sharp front fangs into its opponent’s flank.
Do we have a winner?
In a cage match, T. rex has several adaptations that might give it an edge over Giganotosaurus. But don’t place your bets yet. The bigger dinosaur could leverage its skill at hunting massive sauropods to take down a smaller-than-usual foe.
If the battle takes place in one of the creature’s habitats, instead of a neutral environment, it adds another dimension, Schroeder said. For example, in the territory of Giganotosaurus, T. rex may have had difficulty coping with the heat and drought of the desert in what is now Argentina.
These environments and the prey that lived there shaped the evolution of these dinosaurs. During the time of Giganotosaurus, the environment changed dramatically with the appearance of many flowering plants.However, by the time T. rex appeared, the environment was much more stable until a large rock crashed into the planet.
There’s also a lot that’s unknown about both dinosaurs, especially about Giganotosaurus, Schroeder said. Paleontologists are finding fewer fossils and discussing them less at conferences, perhaps because the South American homeland receives less scientific attention and funding. “Paleontology tends to be a little North American focused,” she said.And although “it’s interesting to talk about these questions” about who would win in a war, “we wouldn’t have the answers without the brilliant scientists working in South America and Asia Fly”.
