For you T. Rex addicts out there! - Part 2

[Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>]

T. rex goes on trial 
By Jonathan Amos 
BBC News Online science staff 

The king of killers or fearsome freeloader? It is one of the big questions
currently in palaeontology. 

Was Tyrannosaurus rex really a scavenger - a huge, awkward, lumbering beast that
waddled out of the bushes to pick off the remains of a carcass left by real
predators? 
It is not an image we have become used to - not one, certainly, that Hollywood
has presented to us. 

We like our T. rex to be the monster from hell, threatening to rip the heads off
poor, screaming kids when their jeep gets stuck in Jurassic Park. 

But the evidence that the "tyrant lizard king" may not have been the best of
predators is overwhelming, claims Dr Jack Horner. 

Face the facts 

Who's he? Well, he was the scientist on whom it is said Spielberg based the Sam
Neil character in his blockbuster dino films. 

And if Horner says T. rex was a touch more hyena than lion, you have to take
notice. 


Nowhere in the scientific literature does anyone present evidence to support T.
rex being a predator 
Dr Jack Horner 
The palaeontology curator at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, US,
has probably seen more Tyrannosaurus specimens up close than any other
researcher. 
In the summer of 2000, his dig team pulled up five fossilised beasts; and bear
in mind, the total number of really good specimens so far recovered worldwide is
little more than a dozen. 

For over a decade now, Horner has been preaching his T. rex scavenger gospel to
- it has to be said - a largely reluctant audience. But it has got tongues
wagging, and this week Horner will prosecute his case in London. 

The Natural History Museum is staging an exhibition called T. rex : The Killer
Question, on which the palaeontologist has acted as consultant. 

All the bones 

UK dinosaur fans will get to consider the evidence for themselves, and then vote
on the rival theories - predator or scavenger... or perhaps something in
between. 


The show is sure to be a smash hit - perhaps an even bigger draw than the 2001
presentation of an animatronic T. rex which saw 40,000 queue at the doors of the
famous Victorian museum in South Kensington in its first week alone. 
You can still see that mechanical marvel - but this time chasing an animatronic
ankylosaur. It is set against the Horner vision: a red-faced T. rex tucking into
a triceratops that has obviously been killed by another beast. 

Other highlights of the exhibition include footage from a real-life T. rex dig
conducted by Jack Horner in Hell Creek, Montana, the world's most fertile area
for Tyrannosaurus fossils. 

The museum has also put up its first full-scale model of a T. rex skeleton. 

Real scientists 


THE CLASSIC PREDATOR 
Fast, agile runner 
Arms to grapple 
Teeth to shred flesh 
Super-sharp vision 
"We've presented all the evidence - we've compared them with modern animals and
dinosaurs that we know were pack-hunting predators," said Dr Angela Milner, the
museum's associate keeper of palaeontology. 
"We want people to do what scientists do, which is to take all that in, think
about it, and then come to a conclusion. 

"My own view is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. We know it wasn't a
fast-running creature like a cheetah, but I certainly think it would have been
capable of killing a small, old or weak animal. 

"Any animal, though, will choose the easy option first, so if it found another's
kill, it would certainly eat it." 

Jack Horner holds a stronger viewpoint. Ever since he worked on the 1990 Wankel
specimen, the first to come out of the ground with an arm, he has been convinced
T. rex was an out-and-out scavenger. 

"Nowhere in the scientific literature does anyone present evidence to support T.
rex being a predator - it's an assumption we all have," he told BBC News Online.


"When you analyse the skeleton, looking at the attributes that T. rex has,
compared with animals we are pretty sure were predators, like the raptors - they
have re-curved claws, could run fast, and had laterally compressed teeth and
could grab things - T. rex has almost the opposite. 
"Look at its arms - they're useless. It's nothing like a predator; it's 100%
scavenger." 

T. rex: The Killer Question opens at the Natural History Museum for 10 months on
Friday, 1 August. It will then tour the rest of Europe, with the first stop
likely to be Helsinki. 

Dr Jack Horner will discuss his ideas in a public lecture at the museum's Darwin
Centre on Wednesday, 6 August. Entrance by booked ticket. 

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/3112527.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3112527.stm