Tyrannosaurus Rex is the most famous dinosaur of them all (Image: GETTY)
High performance scanners will reveal more and more fascinating details about the in the course of the next few years, a palaeontologist has said – including the most famous of them all, .
And David Hone, preparing for his slot at New Scientist Live at London’s ExCel centre later this month, emphasised that far from being lumbering primitive beasts, the iconic predators were in fact relatively speedy and probably more like mammals and birds than modern reptiles.
In fact, so perfectly evolved were the prehistoric creatures, he stressed, that there is no reason to think they would not be walking the Earth today it was not for a .
Mr Hone is Reader in Zoology at Queen Mary University of London and the author of How Fast Did T. rex Run? and The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, and has written about dinosaurs for leading publications such as National Geographic, The Guardian, and HuffPost.
His talk at NSL will consider the latest findings on dinosaur behaviour and explain how researchers interpret the often minimal and even conflicting information available to them.
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David Hone will be speaking at New Scientist Live (Image: David Hone)
Asked about how the popular image of T. rex has evolved since the discovery of the first fossil remains more than 150 years ago, he said: “It’s been a bit of back and forth over the century or so since it was first named, but that’s more a reflection of how we have viewed dinosaurs in general than this species specifically.
“We have learned more and more about it though and as ever with science, and especially with palaeontology where data can be so scant, it takes time to home in on the best supported answers.”
Having said that the current ideas about the species were “generally very well supported”, and future research would be “more about refining the details than any shock revelations or overturning these in the future”, Mr Hone stressed.
He added: “In my mind’s eye they are really ‘just’ a very large and successful carnivore of a very long-lived and successful group of carnivores. But I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to run into one.”
The reign of the dinosaurs was brought to an end by an asteroid strike 65 million years ago (Image: Getty)
T-Rex was not a sprinter – but Mr Hone said it was “more than fast enough to cause trouble for humans”.
He continued: “They were not super-speedy (at least as adults) but they were better suited to long distances changes, they were more like wolves than cheetahs, though it’s not like their prey was super fast either.
“Though younger T. rex that were less bulky and more leggy were rather faster. They would most likely be homeothermic endotherms – warm and generating their own heat, so much more like mammals and birds than modern reptiles.”
There is also ample evidence to indicate they were both predators and scavengers, when required, Mr Hone pointed out, and their noticeably puny arms would not have been a hindrance either.
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Were it not for the asteroid strike the dinosaurs might still rule the Earth today, said David Hone (Image: Getty)
He said: “They could have lived up to about 20, but there would have been very high infant mortality, so most would not have lasted a year or so.
“The reduced arms come from the fact that they were probably not being used for much, so natural selection reduced them as they were more a burden than benefit.”
As for how he and other palaeontologists hope to learn more, Mr Hone said: “For the near future it’s going to be the increased use of high performance scanners and the ability to make really detailed and accurate computer models, that then let us test things like the strength of joints or teeth, or how well they could stretch or turn and get a much better picture of what they could or couldn’t do and match it to other sources of data like bitten bones or footprints.”
The Chicxulab asteroid, which smashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago with devastating results, put paid to the dominance of the dinosaurs – although by that time some had already evolved into the birds.
Some have speculated that had it missed the Earth, other species of dinosaur – for example Troodon – might have involved in sapient beings – although Mr Hone thinks that unlikely.
A lifelike Tyrannosaurus Rex model at London’s Natural History Museum (Image: Getty)
He explained: “There’s no reason to think dinosaurs would ever have evolved human levels of intelligence.
“Some of the most bird-like ones were probably quite smart but that’s about as far as we can really go.”
As a result of the mass extinction which followed the asteroid impact, mammals emerged from the shadows to inherit the Earth, no longer forced to live in margins.
Mr Hone concluded: “If the impact had not happened, I don’t think there’s any particular reason to think the dinosaurs would have gone extinct.
“They were doing fine for 150 million years before then and survived multiple other extinction events, and of course the birds survived and we still have more than 10,000 species of them today, so in that respect, the dinosaurs are still doing just fine.”
David Hone is talking at New Scientist Live on Sunday, October 13.