Do you think he saw us?
QUESTION In the film Jurassic Park, a T-Rex attacks a vehicle, and palaeontologist Dr Alan Grant shouts: ‘Don’t move! He can’t see you, if you don’t move.’ Why wouldn’t a T-Rex have been able to see you if you were still?
The T-Rex lived in the late Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago in what is now the western part of North America.
Its full name, Tyrannosaurus Rex, means ‘king of the tyrant lizards’ because the two-footed dinosaur stood up to 20 ft tall, was 43 ft long from head to tail and could weigh up to nine tons.
The suggestion that a T-Rex wouldn’t see you if you kept still is based on the idea that as a hunter its eyesight was based solely on movement. In fact, because it was born to hunt, its forward-facing eyes had excellent depth perception.
With 55- degree binocular eyesight, its vision was far sharper than our own (with 13 times greater clarity than an average human) and even superior to that of an eagle (an animal with eyesight four to eight times better than a human).
So if you were standing in front of a T-Rex as in a scene from Jurassic Park, it wouldn’t simply have seen you, but anyone standing up to 3.7 miles behind you.
These findings were revealed from a project called Dino Morph, created by University of Oregon researcher professor Kent Stevens in 1993.
By the end of the study, it was clear a T-Rex could have seen perfectly well whether something was moving or not, and might not only have had the best eyesight out of all dinosaurs but the entire animal kingdom.
The best course of action for any creature faced with an angry T-Rex would have been to run away because, due to its weight, the massive predator could only chase at an all-out 18 miles per hour. Staying still was the worst possible thing to do.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts. TO URUgUAyANS, the city of Fray Bentos is known for its international bridge to Argentina and the Botnia paper pulp mill, one of the largest in the world.
To the British this port on the Uruguay River, and the capital of the Rio Negro department, is synonymous with corned beef that was once processed there.
Deep water and woodland attracted woodcutters and charcoal burners to the area. Jose hargain, an Argentine merchant, opened a shop and a bar, and established the town of Villa Independencia there in 1857.
Two years later, a British entrepreneur, Richard Bannister hughes, set up a meat-salting business in the town.
The Fray Bentos story began with the collaboration between german chemist Justus von Liebig and Belgian engineer george giebert. In 1840 Liebig developed a meat ‘tonic’, which later became the world-renowned boullion cube, OXO.
But he was unable to produce his beef extract commercially because of the high cost of european beef — 32lb of beef was required to make 1lb of Liebig’s tonic.
giebert informed Liebig of the prodigious waste of cattle flesh occurring at that time in Uruguay and Argentina, as a result of the animals being slaughtered for their hides alone.
With the backing of hughes and a group of entrepreneurs and ranchers, giebert established the Societe de Fray Bentos giebert & Cie. It was named after a local legend, that of Friar Benedict, a 17thcentury hermit who lived in a cave in Bahia Caracoles, about 15 miles downstream.
The company began producing Liebig’s extract of Meat in 1862, and tinned corned beef, sold under the label Fray Bentos, in 1872. The company so dominated the area that the town was renamed Fray Bentos in 1900.
The Vestey group purchased the Liebig extract of Meat Company in 1924, and operating under the name Figorifico Anglo de Uruguay it exported large quantities of corned beef were to Britain under the Fray Bentos brand.
In 1943, more than 16 million cans of corned beef were shipped from the port of Fray Bentos to war-torn europe during World War II.
The company later branched out into soups, pies and other food products for the British market. At its peak the factory would process 400 cows an hour, 2,000 sheep per day, and develop around 200 animal and vegetable products.
The original Fray Bentos factory shut down in 1979. The Fray Bentos brand is now owned by Premier Foods. Today, most of its meat is reared in Britain and Ireland.
George Davison, Woodstock, Oxon.
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