World's Biggest T-Rex Discovered in Canada
Meet Scotty.
The heaviest Tyrannosaurus rex ever unearthed was unveiled last week in The Anatomical Record, weighing in at an estimated 19,500 pounds during its existence.
Paleontologists first dug “Scotty” up in 1991 at a site in Saskatchewan, Canada where they found about 65% of its skeleton. The dinosaur’s eight-inch femur across impressed the team, hinting that its two legs could’ve carried more than 19,500 pounds.
However, even with Scotty’s top role in the hierarchy of predatory dinosaurs, injuries such as a broken and healed rib, an infection of bone growth between two teeth and broken tailbones likely caused by another specimen’s bite proves that it didn’t lead an easy life.
Calculated to be at least 28 years old (a senior in the world of tyrannosaurs), Scotty’s bearings suggest that large predatory dinosaurs were much older and bigger than paleontologists originally deemed to be based on the data they have on currently available fossils.
“As more specimens of those other theropods are found, we’re going to find their Scottys: their particularly large, particularly old individuals,” study leader Scott Persons said. “It would not surprise me that those animals turn out to increase the range of body size—potentially to overlap or even surpass what we know from T-rex.”
In other news, a stolen Picasso painting has been recovered after 20 years.
