Daily Mirror

Rex reduced from feared killer to tufty weirdo

- IANHYLAND

Exciting times on TV at 9pm last night as we were promised a closer look at “the most terrifying monster that ever walked the planet”.

No, I’m not talking about the latest Celebrity Big Brother launch – although looking at one or two of those new housemates you could be forgiven for thinking I was.

I’m referring to BBC Two’s fascinatin­g documentar­y The Real T rex with Chris Packham. It began with the presenter crouched beside a North American alligator whispering: “This is the closest thing to a living dinosaur we’re going to get.”

Now, anyone that spent a trying Christmas tolerating a particular­ly difficult elderly relative may want to dispute that claim – but Packham was talking about actual dinosaurs, not armchair ones.

He was on a mission to discover whether the TV and movie depictions of the T rex over the years were based on any solid scientific evidence. It would appear not. For a start, Packham’s myth-busting revealed that the T rex almost certainly rumbled rather than roared.

We also discovered that the king of the dinosaurs had more in common with birds than it did with ferocious land beasts. Worst of all, Packham and his scientist pals decided that, instead of having tough scaly skin, the T rex probably had thin tufts of dark wispy feathers on its head.

Unfortunat­ely, in Packham’s final CGI mock-up this made the T rex look like that weird uncle who got a hair transplant for Christmas.

That just made me feel sorry for all the other dinosaurs who were having to smile politely and say: “Wow, that looks SO natural.”

 ??  ?? IMAGE SHIFT Presenter Packham with T rex skeleton
IMAGE SHIFT Presenter Packham with T rex skeleton
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