The joy of T-rex! How the king of the dinosaurs was a sensitive lover

IT may have been the most fearsome creature to walk the Earth, but the Tyrannosaurus rex was also a sensitive lover, researchers claim. The terrifying carnivore – 20ft tall with 9in serrated teeth – had a snout as responsive to touch as human fingertips, say scientists. A T-rex would have used its nose to investigate surroundings, build nests, and carefully nudge its eggs and offspring. But another possibility is that males and females enjoyed the sensation of gently rubbing their faces together while mating, experts believe. The US researchers wrote: ‘In courtship, tyrannosaurids might have rubbed their sensitive faces together as a vital part of pre-copulatory play.’ The findings, in the journal Scientific Reports, follow the discovery of another tyrannosaur, called Daspletosaurus horneri in Montana. D-horneri lived before T-rex, around 74million years ago, and was three-quarters the size.

The unusually well preserved fossil skulls and skeletons uncovered led scientists to believe the tyrannosaur family, including T-rex, had large, flat scales, with protective armour-like skin around the snout.

This surface had many tiny openings, or ‘foramina’, connected to hundreds of branches of the trigeminal nerve – responsible for facial sensations – turning the face into a highly sensitive ‘third hand’.

A similar feature is seen today in crocodiles and alligators, which have thousands of little sensory bumps around their jaws.

Researcher Dr Thomas Carr of Carthage College, Wisconsin, said: ‘Given the foramina are identical… [this] indicates they had super-sensitive skin as well.’ The trigeminal nerve has evolved to play a ‘sixth sense’ role in many animals, carrying signals from cats’ whiskers, for example.