Billions of T. rex likely roamed the Earth, paleontologists report

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If you traveled back in time 67 million years ago to ancient Montana, you’d be entering the realm of a tyrant: the iconic predator Tyrannosaurus rex. Before you venture into that lost world, though, you might want to know: On average, how close is the nearest T. rex to you?

That might sound like an impossible thing to know—but after crunching through two decades’ worth of T. rex research, a new study provides estimates of the animal’s population density. In all likelihood, a T. rex would be within 15 miles of you, if not much closer. 

The new study, published last Thursday in Science, also translates these population densities into estimates for how many T. rex ever lived. On average, researchers estimate that some 20,000 T. rex lived at any one time and that about 127,000 generations of the dinosaurs lived and died. Those averages imply that a total of 2.5 billion T. rex lived in the species’ native North America, possibly as far north as Alaska and as far south as Mexico, over a two- to three-million-year timespan.

This research isn’t the first time that scientists have tried to estimate T. rex numbers. In fact, the average population density in the new paper—roughly one T. rex every 42 square miles—closely resembles an earlier estimate published in 1993. But the new study uses the latest T. rex biology research to try to set highly accurate upper and lower limits on the total population.

Source

[A MESS 3,938]

cries in European

[Ronk 14,930]

Yikes!

Better avoid that timeframe next time we use the Wayback Machine.

[moonsago 7,285]

Wow. Is it known how long would a T-Rex live? 

[TheSlash 14,539]

Strut it out, walk a mile, serve it extinct species style

[A MESS 3,938]

3 minutes ago, moonsago said:

Wow. Is it known how long would a T-Rex live? 

mean age is 30 years i think

[bionic 50,111]

3 minutes ago, moonsago said:

Wow. Is it known how long would a T-Rex live? 

About 20-30 years, it is thought

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4 minutes ago, moonsago said:

Wow. Is it known how long would a T-Rex live? 

Yes! From the article:

In the last 20 years, researchers have discovered an extraordinary amount about T. rex, including how long it lived (roughly 28 years), when it reached sexual maturity (roughly 15.5 years old), and how much it weighed when fully grown (roughly 15,000 pounds, on average). These data let scientists calculate T. rex’s approximate generation time—19 years, give or take—and the average body mass of T. rex at any given time.

[Chromatislaps 34,854]

16 minutes ago, Ronk said:

Yikes!

Better avoid that timeframe next time we use the Wayback Machine.

who knows what creepy organisms might have lived during that time that we don't have fossils of 

[venuspop 807]

4 minutes ago, Chromatislaps said:

who knows what creepy organisms might have lived during that time that we don't have fossils of 

who knows what creepy things that still exist in our oceans that we don't know of 

[Chromatislaps 34,854]

4 minutes ago, venuspop said:

who knows what creepy things that still exist in our oceans that we don't know of 

well at least we know that my hole floats in space: 

[PunkTheFunk 125,703]

Ya givin me a billion t-rex's to let you go, ya givin me a-

[venuspop 807]

14 minutes ago, Chromatislaps said:

well at least we know that my hole floats in space: 

omg girl I'm so sorry, who leaked it

[weed 78,870]

That’s interesting, they dominated earth for sooooo damn long wow

[GreenDiamond 6,286]

27 minutes ago, Chromatislaps said:

well at least we know that my hole floats in space: 

delete nudes from Gaga fansite you are disgusting