‘Another slice of triceratops, Barbara?’ Did the fearsome T rexes take care of their sick?
Name: Barbara.
Age: About66m years old. Appearance: Tyrant lizard queen, with a gammy foot and a baby bump.
Tyrant lizard? I’m sure I read something about T rexes being “lumbering scavengers”. The inexorable march of scientific progress means the consensus is now that they hunted and scavenged, and they were agile and quick to pivot, if not fast. Anyway, this one is more of a T regina, if you will: Barbara, the pregnant T rex discovered in Montana.
Oh wow, does that mean they found T rex eggs? That’s cool! Not exactly, but Barbara’s protruding belly means palaeontologists have concluded she died while pregnant.
That seems flimsy. Maybe she’d just had a really big meal? You’re not secretly a palaeontologist, are you? I thought not. They also detected medullary bone tissue, which dinosaurs only produce when they’re preparing to lay eggs.
Did you say she had a gammy foot, too? Yes, a broken metatarsal, which would have been a catastrophic injury and prevented her from hunting.
Poor Barbara. How did she survive? Either she would have scavenged, or she may have fed gregariously: basically, other T rexes might have shared food with her (or she ate their leftovers).
Are you telling me T rexes might be nice to one another? Well, palaeontologists theorised that dinosaurs might have offered each other “protection or feeding from pack kills”. So … possibly?
Is nothing sacred? Can’t a giant faceeating predator be a giant face-eating predator these days? It seems quite heartening to me that they’d share the faces they’re eating with each other, but would you like some more vital statistics to take your mind off this touchyfeely snowflakery?
Hit me. She’s one of only three pregnant T rexes ever discovered. Barbara is 11.7 metres long and 3.4 metres high. Her skeleton is 44.7% complete, making her the eighth most complete T rex ever found.
Impressive. Who among us truly feels as much as 44.7% complete? And where can I meet her? She’s going on display in the Auckland Museum in New Zealand on 2 December, next to a smaller male specimen believed to be an adolescent, called Peter.
What a fate, spending all eternity standing next to a teenage boy. If Barbara can survive a broken metatarsal, I think she’ll be fine.
Barbara isn’t a very giant, ferocious predator name, is it? She’s a largely immobilised scavenger, remember. Anyway, what would you suggest?
How about Roar-drey? Ruth-less? Bitey McBiteface? And this is why we haven’t talked about T rexes since 2009.
Do say: “Don’t get up, Babs, you poor love. We’ve made you a little plate of nibbly bits.”
Don’t say: “RAWRRRRR.”