Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Paleontologists at the University of Alberta say that the skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex found in Canada in 1991 is the largest in the world.
It took more than a decade to remove the sandstone that covered its bones. Only recently have they been able to examine the relatively complete (roughly 65%) skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex.
UAlberta paleontologists report the world’s largest Tyrannosaurus rex and the largest dinosaur skeleton ever found in Canada. Credit: Amanda Kelley
The dinosaur was called ‘Scotty’ in honor of the Scotch whiskey that the find was celebrated. The dinosaur’s skeleton is 13 meters long and probably weighed more than 8,800 kilos (19,400 pounds) when it roamed in the area of the current province of Saskatchewan 66 million years ago.
‘Scotty’ lived more than 30 years, which is much longer than most representatives of this genre.
“By Tyrannosaurus standards, it had an unusually long life. And it was a violent one,” Scott Persons, a U of A paleontologist who led a study, said. “Riddled across the skeleton are pathologies—spots where scarred bone records large injuries.”
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Among Scotty’s injuries are broken ribs, an infected jaw and what may be a bite from another T. rex on its tail—battle scars from a long life.
“I think there will always be bigger discoveries to be made.”
“But as of right now, this particular Tyrannosaurus is the largest terrestrial predator known to science.”
Before ‘Scotty’, the largest T-rex was Sue, that had measured 12.3 meters nose to tail-tip and was 4 meters tall. Dating back to the Cretaceous period—about 67 million years ago, Sue was a gigantic predator that lived about 28 years.
Written by Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer
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