Baby T-rex revealed as ‘adorable and fluffy’ in stunning 3D video remake of deadly dinosaur
Here's how a baby T-Rex really looked...
THE T-Rex is known for its ferocious roar and razor sharp teeth – but the huge dinosaur was cute and fluffy in its youth.
As a youngster, the mighty predator looked like a small bird, sporting a downy fleece and tiny jaws, new 3D models show.
The adorable reconstruction was put together by experts at the American Museum of Natural History.
They used recent evidence about young Tyrannosaurus to create the most accurate depiction of the beast yet.
Historically, T-Rex was thought to have rough or scaly skin, but recent research suggests the meat eater may have sported feathers.
Dinosaurs are closely related to modern birds, and resemble them in quite a few ways, so a feathery covering is not out of the question.
“From the evidence we have, these animals would have hatched out of an egg just the way a modern chick does,” said dinosaur expert Mark Norell, who worked on the project.
“They would have looked like a really weird looking big bird when they came out of the egg.”
We don’t have a lot of baby T-Rex bones to study, but a feathery covering may have helped keep the reptiles warm as they grew.
It could have also acted as camouflage to protect them from hungry predators.
As they grew up, the reptiles no longer needed their feathery coat and so shed it.
The young Tyrannosaurus had very different teeth to its parents, and likely fed on insects and small reptiles, Dr Ford said.
And it wouldn’t have had the characteristic tiny arms of the adult Rex.
“When a Tyrannosaurus Rex first hatches, the arms would have appeared quite a bit longer than they do in an adult,” Dr Ford said.
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here's what you need to know...
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet’s plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we’re still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering “impact winter”, severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact “ignited” major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely “thriving” before the extinction event
“The body grows faster than the arms do, so it’s not like the arms diminish in size, they just don’t grow as fast as the body does.”
We may never know exactly what young T-Rex looked like, as fossil evidence is so rare.
For now, we’ll have to rely on educated guesses by scientists, and the new 3D models certainly shake up our idea of what the meat-eater looked like.
The models are part of the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibition ““, which opens on Monday, 11 March and closes on 9 August 2020.
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What do you think T-Rex looked like? Let us know in the comments!
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