Name: The big bite of the teenage T. rex | Videos | Gan Jing World
Uploaded: 2021-06-02T04:00:00.000Z
Duration: 3 min 13 s
Description: UC Berkeley associate professor, Jack Tseng, explains his research on juvenile T. rexes and what the findings tell us about the lifestyle of the teenage tyranno... | Videos | Gan Jing World

UC Berkeley

https://video2-us-west.cloudokyo.cloud/video/v4/10/e0/5f/10e05f85-9729-4fa6-840f-51f41aead566/master.m3u8

UC Berkeley associate professor, Jack Tseng, explains his research on juvenile T. rexes and what the findings tell us about the lifestyle of the teenage tyrannosaur. 

Tseng loves bone-crunching animals — hyenas are his favorite — so when paleontologist Joseph Peterson discovered fossilized dinosaur bones that had teeth marks from a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex, Tseng decided to try to replicate the bite marks and measure how hard those kids could actually chomp down.

Last year, he and Peterson made a metal replica of a scimitar-shaped tooth of a 13-year-old juvie T. rex, mounted it on a mechanical testing frame commonly used in engineering and materials science, and tried to crack a cow legbone with it.

Based on 17 successful attempts to match the depth and shape of the bite marks on the fossils — he had to toss out some trials because the fresh bone slid around too much — he determined that a juvenile could have exerted up to 5,641 newtons of force, somewhere between the jaw forces exerted by a hyena and a crocodile.

Compare that to the bite force of an adult T. rex — about 35,000 newtons — or to the puny biting power of humans: 300 newtons.

Previous bite force estimates for juvenile T. rexes — based on reconstruction of the jaw muscles or from mathematically scaling down the bite force of adult T. rexes — were considerably less, about 4,000 newtons. CONT'D...

For full story, visit: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/02/young-t-rexes-had-a-powerful-bite-even-if-only-one-sixth-that-of-their-parents/

Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Jeremy Snowden
Additional media courtesy of:
Robert De Palma, Paleontologist (sketches) — 1:05 to 1:11, and 34 to 40 secs
Live Science (digital art)— 52 secs to 1 min
Brian Engh, Paleo Artist (sketches) — 1:01 to 1:04 and 1:11 to 1:17
Eric Snively (Cal ’93), Associate Professor of Anatomy, Oklahoma State University (T. Rex models and X rays) — 1:18 to 1:21
Joseph E. Peterson Ph.D., Associate Professor of Geology, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh (photos) — 1:50 to 1:56
Raphtor, Creative Commons (digital art) — 2:25 to 2:34
Chipp Kidd (background art) — 3:07 to 3:12

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