Identify: Barbara.
Age: About 66m years outdated.
Look: Tyrant lizard queen, with a gammy foot and a child bump.
Tyrant lizard? I’m certain I learn one thing about T rexes being “lumbering scavengers”. The inexorable march of scientific progress means the consensus is now that they hunted and scavenged, and so they have been agile and fast to pivot, if not quick. Anyway, this one is extra of a T regina, if you’ll: Barbara, the pregnant T rex found in Montana.
Oh wow, does that imply they discovered T rex eggs? That’s cool! Not precisely, however Barbara’s protruding stomach means palaeontologists have concluded she died whereas pregnant.
That appears flimsy. Possibly she’d simply had a very large meal? You’re not secretly a palaeontologist, are you? I assumed not. Additionally they detected medullary bone tissue, which dinosaurs solely produce after they’re getting ready to put eggs.
Did you say she had a gammy foot, too? Sure, a damaged metatarsal, which might have been a catastrophic damage and prevented her from looking.
Poor Barbara. How did she survive? Both she would have scavenged, or she might have fed gregariously: principally, different T rexes might need shared meals together with her (or she ate their leftovers).
Are you telling me T rexes may be good to each other? Effectively, palaeontologists theorised that dinosaurs might need supplied one another “safety or feeding from pack kills”. So … presumably?
Is nothing sacred? Can’t an enormous face-eating predator be an enormous face-eating predator lately? It appears fairly heartening to me that they’d share the faces they’re consuming with one another, however would you want some extra very important statistics to take your thoughts off this touchy-feely snowflakery?
Hit me. She’s one in all solely three pregnant T rexes ever found. Barbara is 11.7 metres lengthy and three.4 metres excessive. Her skeleton is 44.7% full, making her the eighth most full T rex ever discovered.
Spectacular. Who amongst us actually feels as a lot as 44.7% full? And the place can I meet her? She’s happening show within the Auckland Museum in New Zealand on 2 December, subsequent to a smaller male specimen believed to be an adolescent, known as Peter.
What a destiny, spending all eternity standing subsequent to a teenage boy. If Barbara can survive a damaged metatarsal, I feel she’ll be nice.
Barbara isn’t a really large, ferocious predator identify, is it? She’s a largely immobilised scavenger, bear in mind. Anyway, what would you counsel?
How about Roar-drey? Ruth-less? Bitey McBiteface? And that is why we haven’t talked about T rexes since 2009.
Do say: “Don’t stand up, Babs, you poor love. We’ve made you slightly plate of nibbly bits.”
Don’t say: “RAWRRRRR.”