Tyrannosaurus Rex Facts
The most famous, most scary, most popular dinosaur ever! The Tyrannosaurus Rex or T-Rex and even its full name is a mouthful, was a large scary dinosaur that lived around 65 million years ago. We have loads of cool facts about the T-Rex on this page.
Tyrannosaurus Rex was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs that ever lived. Growing to over 40 feet long and weighing over 15,000 lbs. It had teeth up to 12 inches it is thought it also had excellent eyesight and smell. It was alive during the late cretaceous about 65 million years ago.
Quick Tyrannosaurus Rex Facts
The Tyrannosaurus Rex measured up to 40 feet in length and weighed up to 7 tons. (15,000 lbs)
T-Rex is considered one of the smarter dinosaurs have a brain about twice as big as earlier large carnivores.
It had a massive skull that measured 5 feet long
It became extinct around 65 million years ago,
14. The name “Tyrannosaurus Rex” means “King of the tyrant lizards.”
The largest T-rex tooth found is 12 inches long
Tyrannosaurus Rex is a long dinosaur name with 6 syllables. You say it like this.
Tie – Ran – No – Saw – Rus – Rex
Almost any dinosaur movie or cartoon you have seen will have had this dinosaur turn up to scare everyone, and now and then eat one or two as well!
We have loads of information on the Tyrannosaurus rex below for you to read and learn about this fearsome predator! Hopefully there are some facts you didn’t know here as well.
We also have printables for you for free so you can use them as posters or pictures to use in your homes or school. You can find these lower down the page.
30 Tyrannosaurus Rex Facts
1. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was one of the largest land carnivores to ever exist, measuring up to 40 feet in length and weighing up to 7 tons. i may have been the largest carnivore ever to walk the earth, but there is debate about the Spinosaurus, the giganotosaurus and even the carcharodontosaurus taking this title.
2. It had a massive skull that measured 5 feet long and was equipped with powerful jaws that could crush bone.
3. Although very big, the T- Rex was a fast and agile hunter, possibly capable of running up to 25 mph. However, there is also research, which we go into more detail here, that says it was more likely was to be found in a fast walk at around 12 miles an hour.
They say it it ran two fast it may shatter the bones in its legs.
4. a little known fact about the Tyrannosaurus Rex is that Its eyesight was so good that it could spot prey from over a mile away. It is also suggested that some animals may have been brightly colored, as a deterrent, so they would have been easy to spot if this is true!
5. The Tyrannosaurus Rex had a bite force of up to 12,000 pounds,
the most powerful of any land animal ever known. It actually a simialr foce as an elephant siting on you,6. It ate mostly large herbivores, like triceratops but would also feast on smaller animals, including lizards and mammals. It may have also scavenged for food like most predators, and in the recent prehistoric planet it is shown scavenging turtles with its young.
7. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of the most well-known dinosaurs and has been featured in many movies and TV shows. like all the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, King Kong, and the Land that time Forgot. Of course our youtube movie is all about the T-Rex as well !
8. Tyrannosaurus rex lived between 75 and 65 Million years ago and was likely wiped out due to the asteroid strike on the Earth at that time and the effects of climate change in the aftermath. Most dinosaurs became extinct at that time. If its prey sources died out due to lack of plant life it would soon run out of food itself.
9. Although hard to believe of a dinosaur so large, there are now Some scientists who think that the T-Rex may have been able to use its long powerful tail to swim. it certainly wouldn’t be able by just using those tiny arms! Again it was shown to be swimming in the opening of the first episode of Prehistoric planet
10. The Tyrannosaurus Rex was one of the first dinosaurs to be discovered by scientists, and was discovered in 1902 Although the first dinosaurs were the megalosaurus and the iguanodon.
We have a selection of other articles on everyone’s, almost, favourite dinosaur the T Rex on the site. You can check out the ones below or do a search for more.
- How Tall was a T Rex
- How Big was a T Rex
- How Fast Could T Rex Run
- What is the closest Living Relative to a T Rex
- Tyrannosaurus Rex Facts
- Did T Rex Have Wings
- Did T Rex Roar
11. It has been featured in many museums and exhibits around the world and Most National Natural History Museums will have a T-rex skeleton in their collection, however as it is rare to find complete models they often have resin models and recreations of other T-rex skeletons.
The most complete skeleton is in the Field Museum in Chicago and is called “Sue” After the discoverer Sue Hendrickson. Almost 90% of the whole fossilized t-rex was discovered.
12. The name “Tyrannosaurus Rex” comes from an old language called Latin with some greek in the mix and means “king of the tyrant lizards.” Tyrannosaur means tyrant lizard in greek and rex means king in Latin. you can imagine when they found that first skull why they decided on this name!
13. The Tyrannosaurus Rex is one of the largest land animals to ever live on Earth, it was also possibly the biggest ever predator to live on earth, b weight at least, Spinosaurus was longer, you can read more about that here.
However there are plenty more dinosaur species that have been found that are over 40ft! Like Sigilmassasaurus, Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus and Mapusaurus.
Tyrannosaurus Rex Coloring Pages (and other Dinosaurs)
14 .Some scientists believe that the Tyrannosaurus Rex may have been a warm-blooded creature. Others think they are between birds and reptiles and maybe neither warm or cold blooded. However, despite the lack of agreement, most scientists are moving towards dinosaurs being warm-blooded rather than cold.
15. While fossils can be quite cheap, even as low as 1 dollar, if you want a full skeleton of dinosaurs then you will have to start saving. The most expensive dinosaur fossils was a T-rex skeleton that sold for 31.8 million dollars in 2020!!
How for much MUCH less you can look at smaller fossils if you want to have a piece of a dinosaur. You can check those out here and below.
16. The longest tyrannosaurus Rex tooth found is 12 inches long. However, more often teeth were around 8 inches. That’s still longer than a book! It is 4 inches long than giganotosaurus tooth at 8 inches and double a long Spinosaurus tooth at 5- 6 inches.
17. T-rex was one of the most recent dinosaurs but still 64 million years before us! There were plenty of large carnivores before it, but with that extra time evolving it is thought that T-Rex may have been one of the smarter dinosaurs.
18. T-rex were born from eggs; those eggs could be 17 inches long! That makes a big omelet.
FREE T-REX Download – You can download the T-REX Fact sheet below. It has all the above facts for you to keep and read. Below we will continue with some more Tyrannosaurus facts!
19. Although T-Rex fossils are found in North America mostly, there are some scientists think it may have moved over from what is now Asia and the recent discovery of Morus Intrepidus , which is in the new Jurassic World Dominion movie, might be the T-Rex missing link as it was a small Older version of the T-Rex.
There were also members of the Tyrannosaur family like tarbosaurus discovered in Asia, so T-rex or at least relatives of it seem to be quite widespread.
20. 30 years old is considered to be old for a Tyrannosaurus Rex! They lived into their mid twenties on average. As dinosaurs grew quite rapidly when they were young, there are indicators on their fossilized bones. Once these indicators disappear the dinosaur can be considered fully grown.
21. It is possible T-Rex had small arms as it needed the muscles for its huge bite! In a T-Rex body even though it was so big, it still needed room for all its muscles. It seems that maybe the neck muscles won over the arms.
These arms, even smaller on some predators like carnotaurus, are considered vestigial, or a hangover from previous times, and although Trx arms were actually very strong, it does appear they were evolving out of them.
22. Actually, even though T-Rex has over 50 teeth, and they could be up to 12 inches long, they were not that sharp. teeth are designed to do different things. Some are used to cut, some are used to grind and chew and some are used to stab and catch.
Most T-rex teeth were used to stab and catch and not cut as effectively as other dinosaurs liek raptors, or allosaurus. although they did have serrated (like a saw) edges.
23. Like most predators (animals that hunt for food) if it got the chance it would eat animals it found already dead. This is called scavenging. it has been shown to do this on many dinosaur documentaries, and some paleontologist even suggest it was mainly a scavenger. This is seen as unlikely though.
24. The time the Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the Earth is called the Cretaceous, so the movie Jurassic Park was not exactly accurate. (never mind the cloning of dinosaurs) In fact there were not that many Jurassic Dinosaurs in jurassic Park, the stegosaurus, the dilophosaurus, and the brachiosaurus were all Jurassic dinosaurs however.
25. The T-Rex was pretty smart. its brain was about twice the size of other large carnivorous dinosaurs. The smartest of the dinosaurs is thought to be a member of the troodon species We have an article here about that.
Conclusion
There are 25 facts about the Tyrannosaurus Rex here, but there is loads more to know about this fiercest of Dinosaurs. If you have any facts you want to include you can leave them in the comments and we will add them into the article. If you want to use your name we can credit you next to the fact as well!
You can check out our other dinosaur facts on the pages linked in and below to learn more about dinosaurs.
We also have printables here which you can access, or purchase to help keep the site going.
Hi, I am Roy Ford a General Studies and English Teacher who has taught all over the world. What started as a fossil collection became a great way to teach, motivate and inspire students of all ages and all over the world about dinosaurs and from that and children’s love of dinosaurs came the site dinosaur facts for kids, a resource for all ages.
