Everytime T. rex is given an unwarranted superlative like “most dangerous” or “best,” an angel loses its wings.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say that T. rex is “overrated,” but in terms of a metric as subjective as “dangerousness,” big carcharodontosaurs equal it.
I mean larger doesnt even mean more dangerous at all a tiger and a t rex are both pretty equal tbh. Ripped apart by big jaws or lil jaws is still ripped apart.
Dangerous is also relative. A tiger is likely more dangerous to humans than a rex, because we may not even be registered as something worthy of wasting energy on for a light snack.
I'd be more scared of a ceratosaurus than a t rex personally lol
It isn’t overrated compared to what the actual animal was like (Tyrannosaurus genuinely was a well-adapted apex predator), but it is overrated relative to other megatheropods due to said other megatheropods being underrated.
Comparing charcaradonts and T-rex is like comparing Lions and Tigers. Both Apex predators sure but different environments and different hunting strategies.
T-rex will be pound for pound the most terrifying animal to have ever existed until it's officially outclassed by something in own area and weight class.
T.rex had a much higher bite force (possibly the highest of any land animal)
Look up videos of Komodo dragons, an animal with a bite force weaker than a coyote a quarter its size, single-handedly dispatching fully grown stags larger than themselves with its slashing bites and ask the Komodo dragon if it gives two shits about bite force.
Bite force isn’t the end-all-be-all of macropredatory ability; it’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and not only are there ways to compensate for the lack of bite force, there are certain predatory approaches that work better if they are lower.
In the case of carchs, they did so in a method not dissimilar to Komodo dragons, using ziphodont dentition and a powerful dorsiflexors system to deploy lethal tearing / cutting bites, killing prey via biting into a target and pulling back violently to tear open hemorrhaging wounds and the resultant bloodloss / organ failure that follows.
This type of approach works without the need for high bite forces. The mode of damage used by carchs, that is fatally wounding prey, works independent of jaw muscle force to begin with, and is more dependent on how effectively the teeth cut through tissue. Moreover, ziphodont teeth can more efficiently penetrate and cut through flesh than the blunter incrassate teeth of tyrannosaurs, and so do not require exceptionally high muscle force to accomplish this anyways.
In fact, with this tactic, exceptional bite force is actually a hindrance, not a help. This mode of predation requires that the whole tooth row is engaged in the bite to maximize the size of the wound, and with weakened bite force, a wider gape is allowed for, which in turn better enables the carchs to wrap their jaws around whatever they are biting engage their whole tooth row in their bite. Having a strong bite force, and thereby a smaller gape, would actually lower the effectiveness of this strategy.
As for how effective this strategy is, Komodo dragons have been known to kill prey as big or bigger than themselves within minutes thanks to this strategy, such that their oft-lauded “venom” doesn’t even have time to take full effect before prey is incapacitated from its wounds. Hyenas also use a similar strategy, albeit in a slightly different manner, and even then, they are often able to get the job done in very short order. In any case, such a strategy would be on par with that of T. rex’s, being able to kill prey just as big just as quickly.
was heavier than most Carcharodontosaurids.
The whole point of “pound-for-pound” is that weight / body size is a non-factor. Doesn’t make much sense to say that T. rex is the pound-for-pound scariest animal to ever live and use its body size as proof.
Oh my lawd you fanboys and bite force. Just make it your religion at this point.
Bite force is completely irrelevant when comparing to animals who killed with different biting methods. T.rex used incassete/crushing power to grip and hold onto prey with incredible force while giganotosaurus used ziphodont teeth to slice and sever through flesh and muscle with ease. Rex was the war hammer to giga’s battle axe.
With crushing bites a high bite force is very much crucial in order to pulverize flesh and smash bone. Its skull was very resistant to side to side stress. Animals who kill with a slicing bite often have a notable weaker bite because it’s simply not needed. Giganotosaurus’s skull was resistant to up and down movement, in tandem with its powerful neck muscles it could make fast and precise bites and rip out massive chunks of flesh. A Komodo dragon has a bite force only comparable to that of a coyote despite being multiple times larger and yet it is capable of bringing down far larger prey such as water buffalo(they do not bite and wait). Ziphodont teeth don’t require high power, the knife like structure and serrations are more than enough to cause horrific amounts of blood loss and shock in a short amount of time. They kill just as quickly.
Kind of like a pit bull(powerful jaws, bite and shake) vs African wild dog(slicing bite for severing tendons). You do not want he bit by either.
As for size, this has been explained like 5 times in this thread. But there’s no concrete proof T.rex is bigger, generally only fanboys pedal this repeatedly. T.rex has vastly more specimens of various ages meaning it’s notably easier to find an average than it is for giganotosaurus who has a whopping one legit specimen….who is barely even described. And yet in spite of that according to multiple sources Dan Folkes the single specimen of giga is around 8-9 tons. Comparable to an average T.rex and beaten out only by the usually large specimens like Sue and Cope. And I highly doubt this one single giga is a freak sized individual.
Exactly. Everyone knows pre 2020 fossil revised historical fact checked skinny tail land dwelling bipedal supersaiyan Jurassic park 3 spinosaurus was the most dangerous land carnivore of all time after Godzilla.
I don’t think that’s true in the way this post is suggesting. Carcharodontosaurids were built to take on Sauropods which requires a very specific hunting style and body-plan. Ignoring the overquoted bite-force, T. rex still had more advanced binocular vision, more sensitive hearing, far superior olfactory bulbs, 1-2 tons more weight on average, and more sensitive padding in their foot. This is on top of being a more generalist hunter.
They literally became larger than Carcharodontosaurids independently due to their armored and much more weaponized prey. I’m not saying one is better than the other but if you had to make a list of the ‘deadliest’ terrestrial predators of all time, in a general sense, T. rex was absolutely ‘deadlier’ than a Carcharodontosaur. Unless you’re a sauropod specifically, I guess.
One, We can’t really make any qualifications on whether T. rex was actually bigger than all other theropods. There is frankly way too small of a sample of the non-T. rex megatheropods to conclusively argue which theropod was the biggest, especially given that what few samples we have of said non-T. rex megatheropods still comfortably rival or surpass the size of the average T. rex while only having a sample size of 1-2 individuals. Imagine if we compared lions and tiger, two cat that overlap considerably in size, were compared in such a way. Using lions and tigers as an example, imagine if all tigers in the world were wiped from the earth with no record of their size and we only had 2 tigers, one a female and the other a middlingly sized young adult male, while we had 40+ lions, including some mature, above-average males which were larger than the female tigers. If we were to look at that sample, you'd be inclined to say that the lions are bigger, but we know in life that this is not the case and that the two are much more evenly matched.
To drive this point home further, take Giganotosaurus. Nowadays, most volumetric estimates put it at 8-9 tonnes, or about the same size as a small-to middling size skeletal-mature adult T. rex (e.g. Trix), bigger than smaller, less mature adults (e.g. MOR 555 and CM 9380) but smaller than the truly giant T. rex specimens (e.g. Sue, Scotty, Cope). However, this is also an animal known from only 2 specimens, with only one of which being “good” (such that we can reliably determine the size of the animal) compared to the dozens of T. rex specimens. With a sample size like that, we have no way of knowing if that one good specimen is an abberantly large individual, small individual or an average size individual, or in other words, we have no way of knowing that it is the “scotty” or “sue” of its species, or if it is a more average or even below average representative.
Now, it’d be another thing if you said that T.rex has the larger specimens or that one of the bigger specimens of rex (e.g. ur post was titled “Cope, the most dangerous land carnivore of all time after humans”). However, your title was ascribed not to one specimen, but to a whole species, and that’s something we cannot do in good faith given the sample size disparity.
Two, “dangerousness” is subjective. Dangerous to who?
Humans? A big carch would kill a human with equal ease. To any land animal of the Cenozoic or Paleozoic, as ur previous comment states? Same story, a big carch would dispatch them with equal efficiency.
To other big dinosaurs? Well, that depends. The greater agility, cursorial abilities and bite force of tyrannosaurs may make them more formidable against ankylosaurs (whose hard armor is more easily pierced by incrassate teeth and the greater power of tyrannosaur bites) and ceratopsids (whose relatively high agility requires comparable levels of agility to pursue). However, those features would be relatively less effective against a big sauropod. Tyrannosaur high bite force comes at the cost of gape, and small gapes are relatively less effective at biting voluminous surfaces (e.g. the legs and torso of a sauropod). Simultaneously, the incrassate teeth of tyrannosaurs, though effective against the armor of ankylosaurs, doesn’t do the same level of damage against the layers of shock absorptive soft tissue on sauropod bodies.
Contrast this with carchs, whose lower bite forces give them wider gapes to better bite onto sauropods and whose slicing bites are better able to carve through the soft tissue of sauropods and deal lethal damage more easily.
The only people I’ve seen genuinely consider T. rex the biggest theropod are fanboys who refuse to acknowledge the massive gap in sample size for the sake of their agenda. This is not an opinion that serious people who are serious about this topic actually hold. Even prominent tyrannosaur researchers (e.g. Dr. Tom Holtz) have gone out of their way to state that they don’t think that T. rex is the biggest theropod (or at least that the other megatheropods were equal in size) and these are people who love T. rex so much that they have devoted their life’s work to studying them.
I’ll bet you twenty bucks, in those ten years, we probably still won’t have found any more big carch specimens than we currently have now, or at the very least, we certainly won’t have as many specimens as we do for T. rex. As long as that isn’t rectified, we still won’t know which theropod is biggest, and whether you like it or not, until that happens, T. rex can’t be crowned the biggest theropod.
How is it being a fanboy? available data shows t rex was the biggest. Yes its possible that there are undiscovered specimens of giga or another theropod that are bigger, but its also possible there are undiscovered rex specimens bigger than the ones we have. Or even a completely new species bigger than any of the current contenders. But until then t rex is the biggest known land predator of all time.
It’s being a fanboy because it ignores the difference between specimen size with mean species size. Again, specimens are not, and cannot, be seen as representative of mean species size unless we know what the mean size of that species is — they are data points, not data sets into themselves — and you can’t even begin to know what that is until you have a representative sample (otherwise, you’d be able to say LeBron James is a representative example of an adult man when that is clearly not true.)
“Based on the available data?” There is literally only one reliable data point for Giganotosaurus. You can’t even begin to draw comparisons between the two species except for the fact that a) some specimens of G. carolinii got as big as mature T. rex and b) some T. rex specimens can get bigger than some specimens G. carolinii.
This isn’t to say that you can’t draw conclusions from T. rex having larger specimens. You can absolutely say that T. rex has the largest known specimens of any theropod. That is objective fact. You could also say it’s the most powerful theropod known. Again, objective fact. You can’t, however, say it’s the biggest theropod species. Saying that is simply bad science.
You can absolutely say that T. rex has the largest known specimens of any theropod.
ok so thats where it just seems like semantics to me. id understand if we were talking about it in an academic setting, but what you said was that anyone claiming t rex is the biggest is a fanboy.
we obviously dont have anywhere close to a complete dataset to work with to know which species was the biggest for sure. im not denying that. but based on what we have, t rex is currently the biggest we've ever discovered.
that could definitely change if we get more specimens for other species, but for now i dont think it makes you a fanboy to say t rex is the biggest land predator. you shouldnt have to preface it with "based on current known specimens", that should just go without saying. there is always the chance that someone discovers something bigger tomorrow.
ok so thats where it just seems like semantics to me. id understand if we were talking about it in an academic setting, but what you said was that anyone claiming t rex is the biggest is a fanboy.
But see that’s problem. Paleontology isn’t just a hobby, fandom or interest, but is, by definition, is a science. IMO, it should be, by and large, treated and respected as such. T. rex don’t just exist to be your favorite dinosaur, it was, first and foremost, an animal that obeys the natural distribution of sizes befitting its biology and the laws of physics just like all other animals. As such, when determining how big it was, especially in comparison to other theropods, it should be done so like all other animals, i.e. using a representative sample for all species involved. Ignoring that removes the science from it, and reduces it, essentially, to a fandom, and using statements like “based on the evidence,” is so extremely misguided because it presupposes that there is substantial evidence to begin with — to be clear, with only one good specimen for Giganotosaurus (and basically every giant carcharodontosaur), there is no substantial evidence at all.
To be clear, I’m not going to thought-police you on this. If you think it’s pedantic, and if you want to engage in this type of thinking, by all means, go for it. Hell, you can ignore this entire comment if you so choose. However, it’s an objective fact that if you are a fan of paleontology but remove the scientific aspect of it purely to fit your preconceptions, you are engaging not in paleontological discourse, your engaging in fandomism, or in other words, you are a fanboy.
im not talking about disrespecting science, im just saying that its not automatically fanboy behaviour to refer to it that way in casual conversation, since its true that based on what we have, its the biggest so far.
it should just go without saying that there couldve been something bigger that we just dont have evidence for yet. and if and when its discovered, i wont be upset that t rex is no longer the biggest, i'll just be excited about the new discovery.
Absolutely not. That’s some nonsense one person started pushing 30 years ago. He has since claimed that he didn’t believe what he was saying and was trying to get people to think about dinosaurs in different ways. He’d also like you to ignore the part in a documentary he was featured in where he straight up says he hates T.rex because he kept finding fossils of them instead of the hadrosaurids he thinks are actually cool.
Yes we can and we do make that qualification. T. rex is absolutely, positively larger than any known theropod. By an entire ton minimum. I’m not sure why you guys think a larger sample size somehow means we will magically find gigantic Carcharodontosaur specimens.
That isn’t how science works, regardless of sample size all specimens are to be treated as most likely ‘average’ individuals. Fossilization is already so rare, and we have 4+ T. rex that suggest a size of 12.3M or more and a weight of 10-12 tons.
If we couldn’t make the qualification that T. rex was larger than any known Carcharodontosaurid, we wouldn’t. But we do. Because we can.
I’ll ignore ur other comments regarding “dangerousness,” given how subjective it is as a subject and how exhausting you are as a person, and respond this once to this comment
Yes we can and we do make that qualification. T. rex is absolutely, positively larger than any known theropod. By an entire ton minimum. I’m not sure why you guys think a larger sample size somehow means we will magically find gigantic Carcharodontosaur specimens.
That isnt the point. The point is that you can’t even begin to even draw comparisons between giant carchs and T. rex.
In the 120 years since we’ve discovered T. rex, we’ve found dozens of quality adult T. rex specimens. Of those, the amount that are “Sue” sized or larger can be counted on one hand.
Compare this to Giganotosaurus. We’ve only known of its existence for 30 years, or ab a quarter of the run time we’ve known rex. In that time span since then, we have only found one good specimen, yet this one specimen is already the same size as some large, senescent T. rex specimens (namely Trix) and is a good bit more massive than all other non-senescent T. rex adults.
Given its close size relative to known T. rex specimens and the absolutely abysmal sample size difference, you can’t in good faith say that T. rex, the species, is bigger than Giganotosaurus carolinii, the species, you can only make those qualifications for individuals. We have only one individual of the latter (though it itself is the same size as at least mature T. rex’s) compared to the dozens of rexes, and we have no way of knowing if it is the an abberantly large individual (a “Scotty” or “Goliath” of its species), an average size individual or a below average size individual. Drawing conclusions based on circumstances this fraught isn’t science, it’s fanboyism
Speaking of science…
That isn’t how science works, regardless of sample size all specimens are to be treated as most likely ‘average’ individuals.
If we do that, and we take the total number of T. rex adults and compare it to the total number of G. carolinii adults, G. carolinii has a larger average size. Again, even the one good specimen we have is bigger than pretty much all non-senescent adult T. rex’s. Of course, it would be ridiculous to say that T. rex is smaller based on that, but that’s kind of my point. Before you bring up maturity, we don’t actually know the growth stage of the G. carolinii holotype. Cranial fusion might suggest maturity, but this isn’t a reliable indicator of maturity in allosauroids.
You keep throwing around that “1-2 tonnes” thing like it’s means something. At the size scale that theropods this big operate, a difference of 1-2 tonnes isn’t that big. It’s a difference of 12-25% percent, or well within the range that individual size variation can account for it (as opposed to the species at large being bigger than the other), which when accounting for sample size, is basically a meaningless size difference
Fossilization is already so rare, and we have 4+ T. rex that suggest a size of 12.3M or more and a weight of 10-12 tons.
We’ve also had nearly a century longer to find said fossils and, more importantly, considerably more funding. Do you not realize what kind of difference that makes?
This is how I know you aren’t serious about this. Of every serious tyrannosaur researcher, including Dr. Tom Holtz and the people who described Scotty, not a single one makes the claim that T. rex was larger than the big carchs. These are people who love these animals so much that they’ve devoted their life to studying them. That’s because they understand that sample size, no matter how you cope with it, does matter. If you have a sample size of one, and that one is the same size as a mature T. rex you cannot really go out of your way to say that it’s smaller as a species. Yet you willfully ignore this, as you have done in other arguments.
If you wanna continue this further, argue with the wall. You’re not a serious person capable of holding that kind of discussion.
What a silly thing to say and non-response to what i said.
A bigger stronger thing that could kill more things is more dangerous is a reasonable conceptual analysis of what "dangerous" means. That doesn't commit me to "life is a videogame."
Winning over weight class is not that normal in big sizes tho. What animal wins against an elephant today? none. What animal wins against a rhino? an elephant only.
Sure, but there are a few carcharodontosaurids that are pretty close to T.rex in terms of mass. This is less of an elephant vs a rhino and more of a lion vs a tiger.
Yeah. Giganotosaurus has always been estimated at about the same size as T.rex if not a decent big bigger, though there isn’t much fossil evidence to go off of. Additionally, a study from earlier this year found that Acrocanthosaurus may have also been about the same size as the average T.rex.
Mind you we can't really make a comparison to elephants because of how different the fighting style would be. Elephants fight using their sheer size and strength, not their bite. So comparing therapods is more like comparing dogs, where they all fight the same way
A smaller carnivore(like allosaurus) can be more dangerous since it's more likely to see you as food unlike an elephant sized carnivore like T. rex who would rather prey on equally sized or bigger prey
A nanotyrannus or megalania would be a lot more dangerous than a multi ton predator to us. Additionally, size simply isn’t everything and ain’t the sole factor in a predator’s lethality or success.
And if you’re insinuating that Rex is bigger than their others there’s no concrete proof that T.rex is substantially bigger than the MegaCharchs, that’s simply sample bias cause we have so much more of T.rex than others.
Almost all animals are omnivores, and will eat any source of food they can. A deer will certainly eat a birds eggs / chicks and a lot of a bears diet is mushroom, nuts and other vegetation. I am not making a point that meat is essential but most people would definitely identify a black / brown bear as a carnivore.
For oblique carnivores, mammalian examples would be a lot of big cats, polar bears, marine mammals and insectivores like bats.
No they are not. Things that distinguish omnivores from obligate carnivores/herbivores is the proportion of food source relative to the overall diet. Herbivores like Bovids and deers eat animal matter opportunistically and rarely, while omnivorous animals akin to bears or boars eat both animal and plant matter fairly regularly, to the point of comprising noticeable portion in their diet. Albeit in both cases plant matter comprises much larger portion compared to meat.
You realize that most of those megafauna were already going extinct before humans hunted them, right? Humans only hunted off the last populations of megafauna that were in small areas and struggling from changing ecosystem.
Only some megafauna, such as the New Zealand megafauna, were 100% hunted to extinction by humans.
Makes no sense that large animals persisted in those regions for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years... but yet all of a sudden this new and super efficient apex predator that also can modify the environment far more than any prey shows up and they all disappear.
Who do you people serve by spinning these false narratives?
"Who do you people serve by spinning these false narratives?"
What narrative? Truth, facts and reality aren't "false narratives".
It's true that human populations, such as the Clovis did have a diet that consists of mammoths, isotopic testing of an infant Clovis individual shows that the level was similar to that of Homotherium, the study also yielded bison and horse in the isotope of the infant suggesting that the Clovis hunted smaller animals besides mammoths. Here's the issue, that's just the Clovis, not ALL human populations.
Various human populations different diets than the Clovis. Using isotope alone does NOT prove the overkill theory as correct. Most humans also do NOT exclusively hunt large animals, most humans preferred smaller animals such as deer or elk as it doesn't take much energy or calories as it would by bringing down a mammoth. In many cases, most populations of humans only hunted megafauna when times were tough such as during the time of the glacial period, where most of the planet had colder climates. To kill that many megafauna within a short amount of time would lead to a lot of meat being wasted, we know that humans, such as the Clovis, did NOT do trophy hunting and only hunted animals for resources that did not waste anything as we see artifacts made from bones and clothing made from the skins of mammoths and other megafauna.
There also ISN'T a good enough sample size of fossils to PROVE the Overkill Theory. As a matter of fact, some fossil sites do NOT show signs of megafauna remains having been butchered or cooked. Only a few sites show signs of humans hunting megafauna such as mammoths.
Just because some sites show signs of humans hunting megafauna does not mean that humans are the main contributor.
There's more evidence that changing ecosystems and climate DID play a major role, we know that when the mammoth steppe disappeared, mammoths and other animals that depended on the steppe began to die out.
Even in Australia, many megafauna had died out before the arrival of the Aboriginal tribes due to extreme droughts, only some megafauna survived when they arrived. Most populations were already extirpated by that point.
The most specialized are always the ones that struggle the most when the climate changes, when their habitats change and when the geography changes. Mammoths were not as adaptable as modern elephants, when the climate began to warm, mammoths did not benefit from it and began to struggle. Mammoths didn't just feed on any kind of grass, they fed on specific grasses. It also didn't help that the routes mammoths used to migrate also changed due to changing geography.
We know that when the mammoth steppes disappeared, woolly rhinos began to die out and struggle.
For megafauna that lived on islands? Yes, humans were the main contributor. Some island megafauna, such as the giant lemurs of Madagascar died out as recently as the 17th century. This makes sense as island ecosystems are a lot more fragile than mainland ecosystems.
Many island species had no fear of humans or the animals they brought with them.
Species such as the dodo, though not hunted by settlers for food, died out due to environmental changes and because of introduced pigs.
Final verdict:
The truth is, it was a wide variety of contributors that led to the extinction of megafauna, but humans weren't the main cause. Most of the megafauna were specialized for specific resources and habitats.
When the climate began to warm, many struggled and were forced into smaller areas, some populations were extirpated, while some remained. When humans found them, they came across the last populations of these incredible animals. Humans didn't know that they were the last populations of megafauna, they didn't know any better. Early humans hunted to survive, and sadly, it only sped up the process of extinction until the last of the megafauna died out.
Only some megafauna, such as modern elephants and modern rhinoceroses, survived due to how adaptable they were to warmer environments. Modern elephants had the same reproductive rate as mammoths, which shows that even early humans hunting them wasn't enough to cause such a decline in their populations.
Only island ecosystems suffered great catastrophes from human influence and expansion.
Sometimes, nature IS what causes mass extinctions and sometimes just sometimes, humans either are the main contributor or speed up the process of mass extinctions. And then other times, such as the case with the dinosaurs, mass extinctions are caused by space debris hitting the Earth and causing a chain reaction of events.
Absolving us of our multi-millennial abuse of wildlife is the narrative.
Combination theory is just common sense. But the complete wipeout of all of these large animals, globally, makes no sense without human presence. Interglacial species such as the American Mastodon should have thrived during a warming period. So then why aren't they here?
Modern elephants had the same reproductive rate as mammoths, which shows that even early humans hunting them wasn't enough to cause such a decline in their populations.
I've always heard the suggestion that mammoths didn't have the advantage of instinctively avoiding hominids as elephants who had co-evolved with them did.
People who handwave our responsibility in the past use it to excuse why we'll live in a future without megafauna.
"Interglacial species such as the American Mastodon should have thrived during a warming period. So then why aren't they here?"
A study ["Post-Clovis survival of American Mastodon in the south Great Lakes Region of North America" 2009] shows that mastodons lived beyond the Clovis time period and into the Younger Dryas. With this data, we now know that human hunting and climatic perturbations are NOT immediately responsible for driving mastodons to extinction.
We also know that humans lived with mastodons for millennia prior to their extinction.
"People who hand wave our responsibility in the past use it to excuse why we'll live in a future without megafauna."
No, it isn't. That's the WORSE take on this.
Our ancestors thousands of years ago DIDN'T know what responsibilities were, they didn't know any better, they were barely learning about the world around them and didn't know what extinction was. They were hunter gatherers that were only trying to survive.
Us modern humans should KNOW BETTER, and are FAR WORSE than our ancestors. Poachers decimate populations on a much greater scale and do it for money in the black market. While trophy hunting may give funding to conservation, it still DOES NOT excuse the act of hunting threatened species for trophies in protected areas.
At least with tribesmen, they aren't trying to cause extinctions, they are hunter gatherers like all our ancestors thousands of years ago and also trying to keep the tradition of said ancestors alive. Tribesmen don't have as much of an impact as trophy hunters or poachers on wildlife.
Today, yes, the responsibility is ours, but don't EVER bring our ancestors into the mix in our current wildlife issues.
Eradication of wildlife didn't magically crop up with white settlers. More likely started with cave lions and cave hyenas.
With this data, we now know that human hunting and climatic perturbations are NOT immediately responsible for driving mastodons to extinction. We also know that humans lived with mastodons for millennia prior to their extinction.
Going backwards to "I guess we don't know" still doesn't absolve human responsibility.
Those people are anatomically indistinguishable from modern Homo sapiens. They were as capable of complex thought as we are. You're treating them like they were children. Not to mention they did plenty more than just hunt. They burned a lot of brush, and it just so happens that Mastodons were browsers who relied on... brush.
E: Whatever your response is, I can't read it. Did you block me? Lol I hope not.
It started with them.
It didn't, more recent data shows that megafauna were already dying out due to climate shifts before humans arrived, early humans only hunted off the alast populations that were struggling.
The actual first human-caused extinctions occurred much later, when we invented guns and money. Guns are far more dangerous than the spears and arrows our ancestors crafted and some will be willing to massacre for money.
I would rather live in a world where I have to avoid natural predators.
I too have the same preference in life style.
It’s more complicated than that. The average lifespan of a single species estimated to be about 1-2 million years, though it’s hardly a foolproof estimate. Wooly mammoths were around for about 800,000 years, which is below that average but not by much. Megalonyx was around for 5 million years. Smilodon was around for 2.5 million. Glyptodon was 3.2 million. Aurochs was 2 million.
About 10k years ago, the planet was transitioning out of the last ice age. The climate shifted warmer, glaciers receded, conifers shifted north and deciduous forests and grasslands expanded. Animals that adapted to one environment weren’t able to survive the new ones and populations started to decline.
Genus Homo, who were all generalists with tool usage that exceeds any other known species in all of earth’s history to help them adapt to just about any environment on the planet, were able to expand into new parts of the world thanks to said receding glaciers. Animals they relied on migrated elsewhere to follow the plants they needed to survive, and humans followed them. With no way of understanding the concept of extinction or surveying the populations of other species, they likely did finish off some of the more vulnerable species faster than if they had just petered out on their own in the new climate.
I’m immediately suspicious of anything that condemns ancient humans based on modern knowledge. People hunted to survive and feed their families, just like every other predatory species. As I said they had no concept of conservation or quantitative ecology, at least certainly not on the scale we have today. They may have managed their local herds in ways we would consider ethical, but the climate continued to thin them anyway. Some species may have been nearly indistinguishable from the outside, especially where ranges overlap and intergrades happen, so people thought there were a lot more of them than there actually were (think of African bush and forest elephants today). But they almost definitely understood the importance of the survival of other species to that of their own and treated the natural world with far more respect than colonial sailors, Victorian haberdashers, or the modern logging industry.
As the saying goes, there’s three sides to every argument. Some people say climate change wiped everything out, some say humans did. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, or in this case, a combination of both.
The complete collapse and disappearance of large animal niches is not.
I believe the combination theory is common sense. What I care about is absolving humans of our continuous effect on wildlife. It started in the Pleistocene and hasn't stopped since.
I also remember reading even in new zealand it wasnt all hunting didnt the natives use wild fires to burn off brush or something causing some habitat loss ?
Well, I'd say Giganotosaurus or Carcharodontosaurus were up there too among the most dangerous land carnivores that have ever existed, but yes, calling Tyrannosaurus Rex that way is not an overestimation at all, it really was one of the most OP things that nature has created (only confidently surpassed by humans).
That's why I've put the T-Rex in the same category as other large theropods; for a human being, I honestly doubt that much would change if you were being chased by any of the three I mentioned.
Vision: it had superior binocular vision, but only around that of a horse (55-60 degrees). So it wasn’t leaps and bounds better like often assumed, additionally giganotosaurus and Co would have similar binocular vision to crocodiles some falcons and birds of prey at 20-25 degrees and you’ll never see anyone claim they have poor vision. They both can precisely nail a small moving target with ease. So that’s not important.
Intellect: there’s zero proof it was smarter. That baboon study lacks ample evidence and has been beet heavily scrutinized. Unless you’re referring to the “crocodilian brain vs bird brain” with carnosaurs and coelosaurs, that’s still not accurate. Not only do larger predators have generally similar intelligence to one another but no legit studies have been done on either to my knowledge. But anyways, crocodiles and reptiles in general are vastly more clever than often assumed. They have been observed setting traps, placing rather coordinated hunts together, playing, and more.
So in short, neither of those points are meaningful.
To be fair, the speculation that the T-Rex was more intelligent simply because its brain was larger is outdated; we now know that brain size is not necessarily related to an animal's intelligence. In fact, the brain of the Carcharodontosaurus was quite similar to that of crocodiles, which we now know to be extremely intelligent, capable of using tools and tactics when hunting.
brain size is however absolutely correlated to intelligence. at the very least, among mammals, brain size as a proxy for absolute neuron count is a valuable estimation of intelligence
Actually, brain size has a weak correlation with intelligence, and it's not the end of the discussion by any means; otherwise, we would say that the sperm whale is the most intelligent animal on the planet because it has the largest brain (and it's a mammal).
You really need to go touch some grass I literally always see you freaking out when someone says anything remotely positive about T. rex. It is extremely cringe.
Dangerous to what? Humans? A moderately sized theropod would be way more likely to see us as food than a Rex. To a fly, a spider might be the most dangerous carnivore.
Humans causes a mass extinction. That's why we are scary.
The T-rex could probably kill every land animal in the Cenozoic and the Paleozoic. That's why they are scary.
I don’t know about species from back then, so I don’t know. What I mean is that a bear kills about 15% of what they try to kill. A Lion is at 25-30%. Still really small. Orcas, the second highest kill ratio is just around 50%. The one with the highest kill % is the Black-Footed Cat, which is up around 70-80%
So I’m sure there were species back then they had a higher kill count that the T-Rex, percentage wise.
Yeah I would recommend watching a video on it. Its really impressive. They don’t chase flying prey but calculate where it will be in the next second and intercept its flight path.
It honestly depends on how you define carnivorous.
I believe humans are facultative carnivores. We need proteins and fats to stay alive (animals) but can eat plants if need be. Dogs are a good example. IMO we need meat to be healthy but we can definitely survive on plants.
Because we are omnivorous? Large portion of our diet is comprised that of plant matter, which in itself prevents us from being carnivores by definition
Are we not? Isotopes show that ancient humans ate mostly megafauna. We have incredibly acidic stomachs and we absolutely need fats and proteins to stay alive. We have more in common with a wolf dietary wise than something like a chimp. I think it shows that humans were scavengers that evolved into facultative carnivorous apes.
We do have more meat based diet compared to chimps and earlier more basal Australopithecines, but that doesn't stop our species from being generally omnivorous animals. Though, it should be noted that omnivory is just like other dietary strategies, a spectrum rather than a clear cut line, although it is much wider spectrum compared to other two. I will use the examples of bears and pigs again. As they are both omnivores, but bears are generally more carnivorous.
Virtually no major ocean predators or even creatures have arms, so…dumb comparison.
Non venomous snakes have a very specific constriction method. We’ve seen it time and time again
I have never seen a major land predator with virtually useless arms. Granted nobody has seen it all, but I’d love to see how T-Rex did it. Logistically it seems challenging despite the massive head and banana sized teeth.
For example, in hunting circles (at least historically) the leopard is typically considered the most dangerous of the big cats, the cape buffalo more dangerous than either African rhino (and same goes for native large bovid vs native rhino in other places), and sloth bears have a reputation for punching above their weight as well. That's a rich man's game & I have no personal experience, but it seems to be the consensus.
In my own experience (being an avid reptile guy) I can say that I'd much rather deal with an intimidatingly large water or croc monitor vs a nile of half the size, an alligator snapper vs a common snapper, and so forth.
Hell....I used to hang out with a guy who weighed maybe 140lbs soaking wet with a belly full of bananas who grew up rough & tough, and multiple times I saw him thoroughly work over people twice his weight and a solid foot taller with ease, whether in a street fight or with gloves on.
Behavior rarely fossilizes, and attitude or "gameness" never does. For all we know, T. rex might have been a badass on paper through size and robusticity, but an absolute pussycat in real life compared to something else in the same size range (or smaller). Or maybe the time-travelling human would find some species of midsized ornithischians far more dangerous in actual practice than anything else in a given ecosystem....you never can tell, really.
Because just something is bigger doesn’t make it dangerous
I never said a chimp was more dangerous than a rex. I clearly compared it to an orangutan and clearly mentioned size
And I pointed out a mamba because of its venom
It’s probably not as big as most constrictors, but is much more dangerous to deal with. Proabably should’ve been more clear on that part, but my point still stands
We don’t know the behavior of a lot of theropods, so there is a chance there could’ve been plenty of smaller theropods more dangerous due to their claws or them just being faster or even smarter than a Rex
I dont know, I think the most dangerous land carnivorous of all time after human could definitely be debated . I feel like Utahraptor or Megaraptors might be top contenders for that spot or even modern day Siberian Tigers or Jaguars..etc
If you use the largest known Tyrannosaurus specimens, yes, but even then not by much (1-2 tons is not a lot when we are talking about animals weighing over 8 tons), and that’s before taking sample size into account.
I know Vividen is an assumed tyrant fan but according to his latest megatheropod update, adjusted volumetric work suggest the body mass of carchs was slightly overestimated and mass wise even subadult rexes seem to dwarf the competition.
I agree with you that carchs are underhyped but in terms of bulk and carnivory brute force, it's hard to underhype T. rex.
I’m familiar with the claim, but I’m not sure about some of the specifics.
One of the specimens he listed may flat-out just be smaller than the Giganotosaurus holotype. One of the specimens he mentions include “devil Rex.” Now, if this is referring to MOR 555, which is what Wikipedia refers to as “devil rex,” that specimen has repeatedly been considered to be the same size as the “Fran” Acrocanthosaurus specimen, an animal that by Vividens own admission, was dwarfed by the G. carolinii holotype. This claim supported by volumetric estimates from a decade ago up (Bates et al. 2009) to this year (Dempsey et al. 2025), and would put the specimen in the 6-7 tonne range, well below G. carolinii, which was between 8-9 tonnes (as in, greater than 8 tonnes, smaller than 9). Now, it is totally possible that “Devil Rex” refers to another specimen, but if not, he’s mistaken here. It’s also worth noting that this specimen is an unambiguous adult, and is actually older than a lot of other larger specimens, such as Scotty.
Saying that “even subadults are bigger than G. carolinii” is a little misleading here, since T. rex specimens vary wildly in size, such you can’t really correlate age with size like that. For instance, Scotty, one of the largest T. rex specimens, is actually a really young adult. By contrast, Trix, a specimen that by Vividen’s own admission, was about the same size as the G. carolinii holotype, was an extremely old specimen, itself a senescent adult only beat out by Sue in age. Beyond that, there are plenty of unambiguous adult rexes older than Scotty, including MOR 555 and CM 9380, which are outright smaller than the G. carolinii holotype, even by the Vividen’s own admission. So while it is technically true that there are young adult rexes that are bigger than Giganotosaurus, it’s just as accurate to say that there are also older adult T. rex’s that are smaller than the G. carolinii holotype, and imo, it’s just as important to point that part out as well. T. rex was just that variable in size, and given the new Meraxes specimen, theropods writ large were too.
Edit: source for T. rex age statements: Carr (2020)
Hi Mophandel! Good to see you here. Thought I'd clarify some statements.
The size I'm using for MOR 555 comes from scans of the material that I've personally viewed and were utilized to create a life recon by Ji et al. 2026, the abstract of which is in SVP and resulted in a 9.4 t mass for MOR 555. Other recons are not nearly as precise or detailed, since this one layered each individual muscle over the skeleton. Eric Snively and Kyle Atkins-Weltman are also on the team. Their Giga holotype, again based on scans and using muscle-level recon methods, is 8.2 t. In terms of age, histology has been done on MOR 555 (Horner & Padian 2004) that demonstrated the specimen lacked an EFS and was still growing at the time of death, and so was unambiguously not skeletally mature.
Trix is also notably more massive than the Giga holotype, despite being one of the smallest unambiguously skeletally mature (EFS-bearing) rex specimens. This is again based on my directly comparing the scans of the material element by element. To my knowledge, CM 9380 lacks histology to actually ascertain its skeletal maturity, but that's another specimen that's often regarded as much smaller than it really is. Our scans demonstrate that the only measurements it's smaller than Giga in are skull length and (barely) femur length. In every other overlapping element, CM 9380 is larger when using the same orthographic measurement standards.
Of course, I understand if you don't want to take my word for that. I do have permission from the member of our team who obtained the scans to share them, and many of the element comparisons are actually already public on Chinese forums. I plan on including more images of the direct comparisons in videos when relevant, and of course as the various papers release next year the sizes of these specimens will become more clear when using the same recon and measurement standards.
Good to see you here as well. Some clarifications and questions.
When I say adult here, I’m not referring to skeletal maturity. I’m referring to the stage in which growth is still occuring, yet is slowing. Refer to my citation of Carr (2020) for clarification, which has CM 9380 as one of the specimens in their dataset. I use “senescent” here as a stand in for skeletal maturity, I.e. growth has largely stopped. However, I suppose I should have clarified.
For the muscle-specific recon of the G. carolinii holotype, did they use the mount 1-to-1 or did they use a more up-to-date recon. That mount has some major issues, not just with the skull, but also with certain aspects that have a lot to do with mass, namely the scapulacoracoid (something we’ve talked about before).
With respect, I do actually find that hard to believe. However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re right. Where would the G. carolinii holotype scale among T. rex specimens in ur opinion. Which is it bigger than, which is it the same size as?
This is actually my most important question. Which theropod is bigger isn’t that interesting to me, I usually only bring it up to staunch unnecessary hyperbolics like the post above. Plus, my interest is in carchs in general, not just Giganotosaurus, and seeing as there’s a new giant Meraxes specimen on the way, a 9+ tonne carch is on the horizon anyways. However, I am much more interested in how these carchs operated, I.e. biomechanics. Dr. Snively mentioned in a 2025 dispatch that there was ongoing biomechanical investigations regarding carchs, seemingly regarding their akinetic cervical apparatus (which based on the Taurovenator paper, was something that was a synapomorphy of carcharodontosaurines in general, if not giganotosaurins). Do you have any insight ab that, if there are new publications in the works etc.
Always a pleasure. I enjoy your insights and inquiries.
That's a good clarification, and I think that's a reasonable definition of adult. I tend to use adult to mean skeletally mature as in bearing an EFS, since morphological characters like cranial and vertebral sutures fusion can be variable. Under your definition MOR 555 would be an adult.
Our team scanned all of the original Giga material in addition to the mount. The recon we have is based on the original material and corrects the numerous glaring issues with the mount, including updating the skull and fixing its horribly deflated rib cage (from 1 m on the mount to 1.3 m).
From the scan-based models we have, the Giga holotype seems to be notably larger than AMNH 5027 (which we have at about 7.2 tonnes, actually slightly smaller than Dempsey's because he puts more soft tissue on than we do). It's roughly comparable to Thomas and Tufts-Love if not larger. The key point in size comparisons is that Giga is longer than most rexes, but much shorter and not quite as robust. Its standing hip height in neutral pose is about 3.5-3.6 m, while the majority of the rexes we have scanned stand 3.7-3.9 m tall and have dorsal widths 1.3-1.6 m at the same points. Tristan-Otto, Trix, MOR 555, CM 9380, LACM 23844, Scotty, Sue, and Victoria are the scanned specimens we have that are larger than the Giga holotype, ranging from barely (CM 9380) to dwarfing it (Scotty, Sue). That of course is not including the fragmentary giants like Cope, which we don't have scans of yet.
I'm with you there (both about carchs being generally awesome and a huge Meraxes seeming well-supported). I'll have to ask him, since I haven't chatted with him in a month or so. It certainly sounds like exciting research regardless!
Good to know both regarding the accuracy of th reconstruction and the size of the holotype. I’ll adjust my opinions regarding the holotype’s size accordingly. This still doesn’t change too much, the latter specimen you mention, “Tufts-Love,” is an essentially on the cusp of becoming a proper “adult” T. rex (Carr (2020) puts it literally on the boundary between “young adult” and “adult” in their growth curve) while AMNH 5027 is regarded as a proper adult as well. That, and given statements regarding CM 9380 being “barely” bigger than it, the claim regarding it being the size of an adult Rex still holds, albeit it needs to be tailored somewhat.
It's definitely always important to clarify definitions when it comes to ontogeny! Ideally the Giga osteology will include a histology. I tend not to use Carr 2020 since it included Nano specimens and didn't include as much histological backing for ages as I would have liked, but I'm interested to see how that changes
if i put you alone in a 100 meter field. and you had to choose the animal that would spend the day in that field with you fora day. u choosing rex or mosquito??
idk why people are hating it seems pretty reasonable that a t. rex poses the greatest threat to the most land animals among terrestrial carnivores. if we allow gregariousness, humans definitely take it, and if we have legitimate gregarious megatheropods they take it. otherwise, in single combat, i think ops stance is pretty reasonable. you guys just have silly notions of nuance
Why do you think it would be able to beat other megatheropod single handedly? Bite force, agility, body size, intelligence etc.? None of those are really the factors you think it is.
bite force is only useful if you land the bite at all, and so bringing it up presupposes that the animal lands a bite in the first place, which isn’t a guarantee.
agility, at close quarters, is a non-factor at these size scales. As agile as T. rex was, it was an 8-10 tonne carnivore. Dodging a up-close, near point-blank bite from a carch, which had a neck morphology well suited for rapid striking, is impossible for a carnivore that big
intelligence; I don’t know how smart you think T. rex was (spoilers, probably not as smart as you think) or how dumb you think carchs are (spoilers, probably not as dumb as you think, especially given that we evidence of gregariousness in at least one taxa), but neither of these animals are so smart that that intelligence actually has an impact on how combat plays out — weaponry is the only deciding factor. Throw a leopard against a chimp and ask the chimp how much its intelligence matters.
More importantly, it seems like you think a T. rex would be able to tank a bite from a big carch unscathed. These weren’t animals operating by a “death-by-a-thousand-cuts.” Rather, these were animals with nearly two meter long jaws, with that entire length adorned with ziphodont teeth, who were dispatching their prey with a handful of devastating, cleaving bites that could disembowel prey or tear open their throats in seconds. Look up the damage a Komodo dragon can do to a deer, thats the kind of damage carchs were inflicting.
Rest assured, when a carch gets its jaws around the neck of a T. rex, none of that bite force, intelligence or agility will matter; it’ll be useless as the allosauroid slices open the tyrannosaurs neck ear-to-ear and bleed it out. Moreover, the greater bulk of a T. rex won’t really allow it to shake off a carch mid-bite; the lower agility of carchs also makes their footing more stable and the imbricating cervical verts act to resist lateral stresses. The only thing that saves it is if it gets its jaws around the carch first, which kinda sums up my thoughts on the matter. It’s a 50/50, with whoever gets the first bite winning (at size parity).
The only worthwhile point is size, but even then, with as small of a sample size as we have for big carchs, it’s not really a given that T. rex really was bigger than other big carchs. The one good Giganotosaurus specimen we do have is already the same size as some senescent T. rex specimens. The probability that it could reach the size of the biggest T. rex’s isn’t that far fetched.
Even then it can only be fairly compared to other members in its clade and it TOWERS above the likes of Yuyutyranus.
I know its hip and cool to hate on the established norm but T-Rex was just HIM. Absolutely insane species nature popped out. If they had thumbs shit would have been different.
How do you even quantify "most dangerous."
T. rex only got that big thanks to enormous prey , a bear is an equally formidable predator in its environment .
"I like dinosaurs"
same
Is this a meme sub?
Everytime T. rex is given an unwarranted superlative like “most dangerous” or “best,” an angel loses its wings.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t say that T. rex is “overrated,” but in terms of a metric as subjective as “dangerousness,” big carcharodontosaurs equal it.
I mean larger doesnt even mean more dangerous at all a tiger and a t rex are both pretty equal tbh. Ripped apart by big jaws or lil jaws is still ripped apart.
Dangerous is also relative. A tiger is likely more dangerous to humans than a rex, because we may not even be registered as something worthy of wasting energy on for a light snack.
I'd be more scared of a ceratosaurus than a t rex personally lol
And also you know tigers are still alive lol
It isn’t overrated compared to what the actual animal was like (Tyrannosaurus genuinely was a well-adapted apex predator), but it is overrated relative to other megatheropods due to said other megatheropods being underrated.
Comparing charcaradonts and T-rex is like comparing Lions and Tigers. Both Apex predators sure but different environments and different hunting strategies.
T-rex will be pound for pound the most terrifying animal to have ever existed until it's officially outclassed by something in own area and weight class.
By what metric is T. rex pound for pound champ in this regard? In terms of macropredatory ability, carchs were right there along with it.
T.rex had a much higher bite force (possibly the highest of any land animal) and was heavier than most Carcharodontosaurids.
Look up videos of Komodo dragons, an animal with a bite force weaker than a coyote a quarter its size, single-handedly dispatching fully grown stags larger than themselves with its slashing bites and ask the Komodo dragon if it gives two shits about bite force.
Bite force isn’t the end-all-be-all of macropredatory ability; it’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and not only are there ways to compensate for the lack of bite force, there are certain predatory approaches that work better if they are lower.
In the case of carchs, they did so in a method not dissimilar to Komodo dragons, using ziphodont dentition and a powerful dorsiflexors system to deploy lethal tearing / cutting bites, killing prey via biting into a target and pulling back violently to tear open hemorrhaging wounds and the resultant bloodloss / organ failure that follows.
This type of approach works without the need for high bite forces. The mode of damage used by carchs, that is fatally wounding prey, works independent of jaw muscle force to begin with, and is more dependent on how effectively the teeth cut through tissue. Moreover, ziphodont teeth can more efficiently penetrate and cut through flesh than the blunter incrassate teeth of tyrannosaurs, and so do not require exceptionally high muscle force to accomplish this anyways.
In fact, with this tactic, exceptional bite force is actually a hindrance, not a help. This mode of predation requires that the whole tooth row is engaged in the bite to maximize the size of the wound, and with weakened bite force, a wider gape is allowed for, which in turn better enables the carchs to wrap their jaws around whatever they are biting engage their whole tooth row in their bite. Having a strong bite force, and thereby a smaller gape, would actually lower the effectiveness of this strategy.
As for how effective this strategy is, Komodo dragons have been known to kill prey as big or bigger than themselves within minutes thanks to this strategy, such that their oft-lauded “venom” doesn’t even have time to take full effect before prey is incapacitated from its wounds. Hyenas also use a similar strategy, albeit in a slightly different manner, and even then, they are often able to get the job done in very short order. In any case, such a strategy would be on par with that of T. rex’s, being able to kill prey just as big just as quickly.
The whole point of “pound-for-pound” is that weight / body size is a non-factor. Doesn’t make much sense to say that T. rex is the pound-for-pound scariest animal to ever live and use its body size as proof.
Oh my lawd you fanboys and bite force. Just make it your religion at this point.
Bite force is completely irrelevant when comparing to animals who killed with different biting methods. T.rex used incassete/crushing power to grip and hold onto prey with incredible force while giganotosaurus used ziphodont teeth to slice and sever through flesh and muscle with ease. Rex was the war hammer to giga’s battle axe.
With crushing bites a high bite force is very much crucial in order to pulverize flesh and smash bone. Its skull was very resistant to side to side stress. Animals who kill with a slicing bite often have a notable weaker bite because it’s simply not needed. Giganotosaurus’s skull was resistant to up and down movement, in tandem with its powerful neck muscles it could make fast and precise bites and rip out massive chunks of flesh. A Komodo dragon has a bite force only comparable to that of a coyote despite being multiple times larger and yet it is capable of bringing down far larger prey such as water buffalo(they do not bite and wait). Ziphodont teeth don’t require high power, the knife like structure and serrations are more than enough to cause horrific amounts of blood loss and shock in a short amount of time. They kill just as quickly.
Kind of like a pit bull(powerful jaws, bite and shake) vs African wild dog(slicing bite for severing tendons). You do not want he bit by either.
As for size, this has been explained like 5 times in this thread. But there’s no concrete proof T.rex is bigger, generally only fanboys pedal this repeatedly. T.rex has vastly more specimens of various ages meaning it’s notably easier to find an average than it is for giganotosaurus who has a whopping one legit specimen….who is barely even described. And yet in spite of that according to multiple sources Dan Folkes the single specimen of giga is around 8-9 tons. Comparable to an average T.rex and beaten out only by the usually large specimens like Sue and Cope. And I highly doubt this one single giga is a freak sized individual.
You would shit yourself before your family and god if stood facing the tyrant king
Yes I would. And you would shit yourself before your family and god if you stood facing the Southern Slayer.
You would shit yourself if you stood facing the Terrible Claw, period
To clarify, I am agreeing with you that most predatory dinosaurs would make us shit ourselves, LOL
Orcas are bigger, smarter, need more food so kill more, and hunt in packs. It’s basically the best of a T-Rex and a wolf combined.
Exactly. Everyone knows pre 2020 fossil revised historical fact checked skinny tail land dwelling bipedal supersaiyan Jurassic park 3 spinosaurus was the most dangerous land carnivore of all time after Godzilla.
In every sub you have people posting wild hyperbole like this. It instantly invalidates an argument in my mind.
I don’t think that’s true in the way this post is suggesting. Carcharodontosaurids were built to take on Sauropods which requires a very specific hunting style and body-plan. Ignoring the overquoted bite-force, T. rex still had more advanced binocular vision, more sensitive hearing, far superior olfactory bulbs, 1-2 tons more weight on average, and more sensitive padding in their foot. This is on top of being a more generalist hunter.
They literally became larger than Carcharodontosaurids independently due to their armored and much more weaponized prey. I’m not saying one is better than the other but if you had to make a list of the ‘deadliest’ terrestrial predators of all time, in a general sense, T. rex was absolutely ‘deadlier’ than a Carcharodontosaur. Unless you’re a sauropod specifically, I guess.
why would a smaller animal have equal dangerousness
One, We can’t really make any qualifications on whether T. rex was actually bigger than all other theropods. There is frankly way too small of a sample of the non-T. rex megatheropods to conclusively argue which theropod was the biggest, especially given that what few samples we have of said non-T. rex megatheropods still comfortably rival or surpass the size of the average T. rex while only having a sample size of 1-2 individuals. Imagine if we compared lions and tiger, two cat that overlap considerably in size, were compared in such a way. Using lions and tigers as an example, imagine if all tigers in the world were wiped from the earth with no record of their size and we only had 2 tigers, one a female and the other a middlingly sized young adult male, while we had 40+ lions, including some mature, above-average males which were larger than the female tigers. If we were to look at that sample, you'd be inclined to say that the lions are bigger, but we know in life that this is not the case and that the two are much more evenly matched.
To drive this point home further, take Giganotosaurus. Nowadays, most volumetric estimates put it at 8-9 tonnes, or about the same size as a small-to middling size skeletal-mature adult T. rex (e.g. Trix), bigger than smaller, less mature adults (e.g. MOR 555 and CM 9380) but smaller than the truly giant T. rex specimens (e.g. Sue, Scotty, Cope). However, this is also an animal known from only 2 specimens, with only one of which being “good” (such that we can reliably determine the size of the animal) compared to the dozens of T. rex specimens. With a sample size like that, we have no way of knowing if that one good specimen is an abberantly large individual, small individual or an average size individual, or in other words, we have no way of knowing that it is the “scotty” or “sue” of its species, or if it is a more average or even below average representative.
Now, it’d be another thing if you said that T.rex has the larger specimens or that one of the bigger specimens of rex (e.g. ur post was titled “Cope, the most dangerous land carnivore of all time after humans”). However, your title was ascribed not to one specimen, but to a whole species, and that’s something we cannot do in good faith given the sample size disparity.
Two, “dangerousness” is subjective. Dangerous to who?
Humans? A big carch would kill a human with equal ease. To any land animal of the Cenozoic or Paleozoic, as ur previous comment states? Same story, a big carch would dispatch them with equal efficiency.
To other big dinosaurs? Well, that depends. The greater agility, cursorial abilities and bite force of tyrannosaurs may make them more formidable against ankylosaurs (whose hard armor is more easily pierced by incrassate teeth and the greater power of tyrannosaur bites) and ceratopsids (whose relatively high agility requires comparable levels of agility to pursue). However, those features would be relatively less effective against a big sauropod. Tyrannosaur high bite force comes at the cost of gape, and small gapes are relatively less effective at biting voluminous surfaces (e.g. the legs and torso of a sauropod). Simultaneously, the incrassate teeth of tyrannosaurs, though effective against the armor of ankylosaurs, doesn’t do the same level of damage against the layers of shock absorptive soft tissue on sauropod bodies.
Contrast this with carchs, whose lower bite forces give them wider gapes to better bite onto sauropods and whose slicing bites are better able to carve through the soft tissue of sauropods and deal lethal damage more easily.
I'll bet you twenty bucks that in 10 years t-rex will still be considered the largest therapod predator.
The only people I’ve seen genuinely consider T. rex the biggest theropod are fanboys who refuse to acknowledge the massive gap in sample size for the sake of their agenda. This is not an opinion that serious people who are serious about this topic actually hold. Even prominent tyrannosaur researchers (e.g. Dr. Tom Holtz) have gone out of their way to state that they don’t think that T. rex is the biggest theropod (or at least that the other megatheropods were equal in size) and these are people who love T. rex so much that they have devoted their life’s work to studying them.
I’ll bet you twenty bucks, in those ten years, we probably still won’t have found any more big carch specimens than we currently have now, or at the very least, we certainly won’t have as many specimens as we do for T. rex. As long as that isn’t rectified, we still won’t know which theropod is biggest, and whether you like it or not, until that happens, T. rex can’t be crowned the biggest theropod.
How is it being a fanboy? available data shows t rex was the biggest. Yes its possible that there are undiscovered specimens of giga or another theropod that are bigger, but its also possible there are undiscovered rex specimens bigger than the ones we have. Or even a completely new species bigger than any of the current contenders. But until then t rex is the biggest known land predator of all time.
It’s being a fanboy because it ignores the difference between specimen size with mean species size. Again, specimens are not, and cannot, be seen as representative of mean species size unless we know what the mean size of that species is — they are data points, not data sets into themselves — and you can’t even begin to know what that is until you have a representative sample (otherwise, you’d be able to say LeBron James is a representative example of an adult man when that is clearly not true.)
“Based on the available data?” There is literally only one reliable data point for Giganotosaurus. You can’t even begin to draw comparisons between the two species except for the fact that a) some specimens of G. carolinii got as big as mature T. rex and b) some T. rex specimens can get bigger than some specimens G. carolinii.
This isn’t to say that you can’t draw conclusions from T. rex having larger specimens. You can absolutely say that T. rex has the largest known specimens of any theropod. That is objective fact. You could also say it’s the most powerful theropod known. Again, objective fact. You can’t, however, say it’s the biggest theropod species. Saying that is simply bad science.
ok so thats where it just seems like semantics to me. id understand if we were talking about it in an academic setting, but what you said was that anyone claiming t rex is the biggest is a fanboy.
we obviously dont have anywhere close to a complete dataset to work with to know which species was the biggest for sure. im not denying that. but based on what we have, t rex is currently the biggest we've ever discovered.
that could definitely change if we get more specimens for other species, but for now i dont think it makes you a fanboy to say t rex is the biggest land predator. you shouldnt have to preface it with "based on current known specimens", that should just go without saying. there is always the chance that someone discovers something bigger tomorrow.
But see that’s problem. Paleontology isn’t just a hobby, fandom or interest, but is, by definition, is a science. IMO, it should be, by and large, treated and respected as such. T. rex don’t just exist to be your favorite dinosaur, it was, first and foremost, an animal that obeys the natural distribution of sizes befitting its biology and the laws of physics just like all other animals. As such, when determining how big it was, especially in comparison to other theropods, it should be done so like all other animals, i.e. using a representative sample for all species involved. Ignoring that removes the science from it, and reduces it, essentially, to a fandom, and using statements like “based on the evidence,” is so extremely misguided because it presupposes that there is substantial evidence to begin with — to be clear, with only one good specimen for Giganotosaurus (and basically every giant carcharodontosaur), there is no substantial evidence at all.
To be clear, I’m not going to thought-police you on this. If you think it’s pedantic, and if you want to engage in this type of thinking, by all means, go for it. Hell, you can ignore this entire comment if you so choose. However, it’s an objective fact that if you are a fan of paleontology but remove the scientific aspect of it purely to fit your preconceptions, you are engaging not in paleontological discourse, your engaging in fandomism, or in other words, you are a fanboy.
im not talking about disrespecting science, im just saying that its not automatically fanboy behaviour to refer to it that way in casual conversation, since its true that based on what we have, its the biggest so far.
it should just go without saying that there couldve been something bigger that we just dont have evidence for yet. and if and when its discovered, i wont be upset that t rex is no longer the biggest, i'll just be excited about the new discovery.
have u seen fossil for the t-rex goliath? it's like estimated to be 13 tons...
Unofficial estimate from a highly fragmentary specimen that hasn’t been formally described.
I thought T-Rex was now thought to be more of a scavenger than a hunter.
Absolutely not. That’s some nonsense one person started pushing 30 years ago. He has since claimed that he didn’t believe what he was saying and was trying to get people to think about dinosaurs in different ways. He’d also like you to ignore the part in a documentary he was featured in where he straight up says he hates T.rex because he kept finding fossils of them instead of the hadrosaurids he thinks are actually cool.
haha, okay thanks
Yes we can and we do make that qualification. T. rex is absolutely, positively larger than any known theropod. By an entire ton minimum. I’m not sure why you guys think a larger sample size somehow means we will magically find gigantic Carcharodontosaur specimens.
That isn’t how science works, regardless of sample size all specimens are to be treated as most likely ‘average’ individuals. Fossilization is already so rare, and we have 4+ T. rex that suggest a size of 12.3M or more and a weight of 10-12 tons.
If we couldn’t make the qualification that T. rex was larger than any known Carcharodontosaurid, we wouldn’t. But we do. Because we can.
I’ll ignore ur other comments regarding “dangerousness,” given how subjective it is as a subject and how exhausting you are as a person, and respond this once to this comment
That isnt the point. The point is that you can’t even begin to even draw comparisons between giant carchs and T. rex.
In the 120 years since we’ve discovered T. rex, we’ve found dozens of quality adult T. rex specimens. Of those, the amount that are “Sue” sized or larger can be counted on one hand.
Compare this to Giganotosaurus. We’ve only known of its existence for 30 years, or ab a quarter of the run time we’ve known rex. In that time span since then, we have only found one good specimen, yet this one specimen is already the same size as some large, senescent T. rex specimens (namely Trix) and is a good bit more massive than all other non-senescent T. rex adults.
Given its close size relative to known T. rex specimens and the absolutely abysmal sample size difference, you can’t in good faith say that T. rex, the species, is bigger than Giganotosaurus carolinii, the species, you can only make those qualifications for individuals. We have only one individual of the latter (though it itself is the same size as at least mature T. rex’s) compared to the dozens of rexes, and we have no way of knowing if it is the an abberantly large individual (a “Scotty” or “Goliath” of its species), an average size individual or a below average size individual. Drawing conclusions based on circumstances this fraught isn’t science, it’s fanboyism
Speaking of science…
If we do that, and we take the total number of T. rex adults and compare it to the total number of G. carolinii adults, G. carolinii has a larger average size. Again, even the one good specimen we have is bigger than pretty much all non-senescent adult T. rex’s. Of course, it would be ridiculous to say that T. rex is smaller based on that, but that’s kind of my point. Before you bring up maturity, we don’t actually know the growth stage of the G. carolinii holotype. Cranial fusion might suggest maturity, but this isn’t a reliable indicator of maturity in allosauroids.
You keep throwing around that “1-2 tonnes” thing like it’s means something. At the size scale that theropods this big operate, a difference of 1-2 tonnes isn’t that big. It’s a difference of 12-25% percent, or well within the range that individual size variation can account for it (as opposed to the species at large being bigger than the other), which when accounting for sample size, is basically a meaningless size difference
We’ve also had nearly a century longer to find said fossils and, more importantly, considerably more funding. Do you not realize what kind of difference that makes?
This is how I know you aren’t serious about this. Of every serious tyrannosaur researcher, including Dr. Tom Holtz and the people who described Scotty, not a single one makes the claim that T. rex was larger than the big carchs. These are people who love these animals so much that they’ve devoted their life to studying them. That’s because they understand that sample size, no matter how you cope with it, does matter. If you have a sample size of one, and that one is the same size as a mature T. rex you cannot really go out of your way to say that it’s smaller as a species. Yet you willfully ignore this, as you have done in other arguments.
If you wanna continue this further, argue with the wall. You’re not a serious person capable of holding that kind of discussion.
also though a 5 ton vs 3 ton predator doesn't matter for killing humans, but for killing each other the size matters.
Because weight isn't what makes an animal with 2 meter long jaws dangerous
if a t-rex would win a fight against a big carcharodontosaur in a fight, then it is more dangerous than that carcharodontosaur.
a reasonable proxy for danger level is what would win in a 1 v 1 fight against the most land animals.
Life isnt a videogame where everything has set stats and win/lose parameters...
What a silly thing to say and non-response to what i said.
A bigger stronger thing that could kill more things is more dangerous is a reasonable conceptual analysis of what "dangerous" means. That doesn't commit me to "life is a videogame."
Well a t rex would win that sometimes yeah, but it could very easily go either way
Winning over weight class is not that normal in big sizes tho. What animal wins against an elephant today? none. What animal wins against a rhino? an elephant only.
Sure, but there are a few carcharodontosaurids that are pretty close to T.rex in terms of mass. This is less of an elephant vs a rhino and more of a lion vs a tiger.
oh didn't know that, cool to know
Yeah. Giganotosaurus has always been estimated at about the same size as T.rex if not a decent big bigger, though there isn’t much fossil evidence to go off of. Additionally, a study from earlier this year found that Acrocanthosaurus may have also been about the same size as the average T.rex.
The trex had weight advantage, a more robust skeleton and a massively stronger bite t rex wins 95% of the time.
To be fair, Tigers are known to hunt large bears in much of their range
Nothing "wins" against another.
Stop seeing nature as a black and white, large nile crocs have killed young elephants and hippos before now.
Mind you we can't really make a comparison to elephants because of how different the fighting style would be. Elephants fight using their sheer size and strength, not their bite. So comparing therapods is more like comparing dogs, where they all fight the same way
Strength ≠ dangerousness
A smaller carnivore(like allosaurus) can be more dangerous since it's more likely to see you as food unlike an elephant sized carnivore like T. rex who would rather prey on equally sized or bigger prey
A nanotyrannus or megalania would be a lot more dangerous than a multi ton predator to us. Additionally, size simply isn’t everything and ain’t the sole factor in a predator’s lethality or success.
And if you’re insinuating that Rex is bigger than their others there’s no concrete proof that T.rex is substantially bigger than the MegaCharchs, that’s simply sample bias cause we have so much more of T.rex than others.
look up the t-rex fossil goliath
Yes I know. 12-12.9 tons. What about it?
megacharchs aren't estimated to be that mass
And? T.rex isn’t 12 tons on average.
Humans aren't carnivores
I dont think all the animals we eat care to distinguish us from carnivores. He should have titled it "land predator" as humans are number 1.
Tell that to the chickens and cows
We're omnivores, we eat everything including meat. Thats different from being an obligate carnivore, which only eats meat.
Almost all animals are omnivores, and will eat any source of food they can. A deer will certainly eat a birds eggs / chicks and a lot of a bears diet is mushroom, nuts and other vegetation. I am not making a point that meat is essential but most people would definitely identify a black / brown bear as a carnivore.
For oblique carnivores, mammalian examples would be a lot of big cats, polar bears, marine mammals and insectivores like bats.
Obviously aquatic animals are very different.
No they are not. Things that distinguish omnivores from obligate carnivores/herbivores is the proportion of food source relative to the overall diet. Herbivores like Bovids and deers eat animal matter opportunistically and rarely, while omnivorous animals akin to bears or boars eat both animal and plant matter fairly regularly, to the point of comprising noticeable portion in their diet. Albeit in both cases plant matter comprises much larger portion compared to meat.
You tell that to the veggies
Tell that to the megafauna that all went extinct
You realize that most of those megafauna were already going extinct before humans hunted them, right? Humans only hunted off the last populations of megafauna that were in small areas and struggling from changing ecosystem.
Only some megafauna, such as the New Zealand megafauna, were 100% hunted to extinction by humans.
Makes no sense that large animals persisted in those regions for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years... but yet all of a sudden this new and super efficient apex predator that also can modify the environment far more than any prey shows up and they all disappear.
Who do you people serve by spinning these false narratives?
"Who do you people serve by spinning these false narratives?" What narrative? Truth, facts and reality aren't "false narratives".
It's true that human populations, such as the Clovis did have a diet that consists of mammoths, isotopic testing of an infant Clovis individual shows that the level was similar to that of Homotherium, the study also yielded bison and horse in the isotope of the infant suggesting that the Clovis hunted smaller animals besides mammoths. Here's the issue, that's just the Clovis, not ALL human populations. Various human populations different diets than the Clovis. Using isotope alone does NOT prove the overkill theory as correct. Most humans also do NOT exclusively hunt large animals, most humans preferred smaller animals such as deer or elk as it doesn't take much energy or calories as it would by bringing down a mammoth. In many cases, most populations of humans only hunted megafauna when times were tough such as during the time of the glacial period, where most of the planet had colder climates. To kill that many megafauna within a short amount of time would lead to a lot of meat being wasted, we know that humans, such as the Clovis, did NOT do trophy hunting and only hunted animals for resources that did not waste anything as we see artifacts made from bones and clothing made from the skins of mammoths and other megafauna.
There also ISN'T a good enough sample size of fossils to PROVE the Overkill Theory. As a matter of fact, some fossil sites do NOT show signs of megafauna remains having been butchered or cooked. Only a few sites show signs of humans hunting megafauna such as mammoths. Just because some sites show signs of humans hunting megafauna does not mean that humans are the main contributor.
There's more evidence that changing ecosystems and climate DID play a major role, we know that when the mammoth steppe disappeared, mammoths and other animals that depended on the steppe began to die out. Even in Australia, many megafauna had died out before the arrival of the Aboriginal tribes due to extreme droughts, only some megafauna survived when they arrived. Most populations were already extirpated by that point. The most specialized are always the ones that struggle the most when the climate changes, when their habitats change and when the geography changes. Mammoths were not as adaptable as modern elephants, when the climate began to warm, mammoths did not benefit from it and began to struggle. Mammoths didn't just feed on any kind of grass, they fed on specific grasses. It also didn't help that the routes mammoths used to migrate also changed due to changing geography. We know that when the mammoth steppes disappeared, woolly rhinos began to die out and struggle.
For megafauna that lived on islands? Yes, humans were the main contributor. Some island megafauna, such as the giant lemurs of Madagascar died out as recently as the 17th century. This makes sense as island ecosystems are a lot more fragile than mainland ecosystems. Many island species had no fear of humans or the animals they brought with them. Species such as the dodo, though not hunted by settlers for food, died out due to environmental changes and because of introduced pigs.
Final verdict: The truth is, it was a wide variety of contributors that led to the extinction of megafauna, but humans weren't the main cause. Most of the megafauna were specialized for specific resources and habitats. When the climate began to warm, many struggled and were forced into smaller areas, some populations were extirpated, while some remained. When humans found them, they came across the last populations of these incredible animals. Humans didn't know that they were the last populations of megafauna, they didn't know any better. Early humans hunted to survive, and sadly, it only sped up the process of extinction until the last of the megafauna died out. Only some megafauna, such as modern elephants and modern rhinoceroses, survived due to how adaptable they were to warmer environments. Modern elephants had the same reproductive rate as mammoths, which shows that even early humans hunting them wasn't enough to cause such a decline in their populations. Only island ecosystems suffered great catastrophes from human influence and expansion.
Sometimes, nature IS what causes mass extinctions and sometimes just sometimes, humans either are the main contributor or speed up the process of mass extinctions. And then other times, such as the case with the dinosaurs, mass extinctions are caused by space debris hitting the Earth and causing a chain reaction of events.
Absolving us of our multi-millennial abuse of wildlife is the narrative.
Combination theory is just common sense. But the complete wipeout of all of these large animals, globally, makes no sense without human presence. Interglacial species such as the American Mastodon should have thrived during a warming period. So then why aren't they here?
I've always heard the suggestion that mammoths didn't have the advantage of instinctively avoiding hominids as elephants who had co-evolved with them did.
People who handwave our responsibility in the past use it to excuse why we'll live in a future without megafauna.
"Interglacial species such as the American Mastodon should have thrived during a warming period. So then why aren't they here?" A study ["Post-Clovis survival of American Mastodon in the south Great Lakes Region of North America" 2009] shows that mastodons lived beyond the Clovis time period and into the Younger Dryas. With this data, we now know that human hunting and climatic perturbations are NOT immediately responsible for driving mastodons to extinction. We also know that humans lived with mastodons for millennia prior to their extinction.
"People who hand wave our responsibility in the past use it to excuse why we'll live in a future without megafauna." No, it isn't. That's the WORSE take on this. Our ancestors thousands of years ago DIDN'T know what responsibilities were, they didn't know any better, they were barely learning about the world around them and didn't know what extinction was. They were hunter gatherers that were only trying to survive.
Us modern humans should KNOW BETTER, and are FAR WORSE than our ancestors. Poachers decimate populations on a much greater scale and do it for money in the black market. While trophy hunting may give funding to conservation, it still DOES NOT excuse the act of hunting threatened species for trophies in protected areas. At least with tribesmen, they aren't trying to cause extinctions, they are hunter gatherers like all our ancestors thousands of years ago and also trying to keep the tradition of said ancestors alive. Tribesmen don't have as much of an impact as trophy hunters or poachers on wildlife.
Today, yes, the responsibility is ours, but don't EVER bring our ancestors into the mix in our current wildlife issues.
Already did. It started with them.
Eradication of wildlife didn't magically crop up with white settlers. More likely started with cave lions and cave hyenas.
Going backwards to "I guess we don't know" still doesn't absolve human responsibility.
Those people are anatomically indistinguishable from modern Homo sapiens. They were as capable of complex thought as we are. You're treating them like they were children. Not to mention they did plenty more than just hunt. They burned a lot of brush, and it just so happens that Mastodons were browsers who relied on... brush.
E: Whatever your response is, I can't read it. Did you block me? Lol I hope not.
It’s more complicated than that. The average lifespan of a single species estimated to be about 1-2 million years, though it’s hardly a foolproof estimate. Wooly mammoths were around for about 800,000 years, which is below that average but not by much. Megalonyx was around for 5 million years. Smilodon was around for 2.5 million. Glyptodon was 3.2 million. Aurochs was 2 million.
About 10k years ago, the planet was transitioning out of the last ice age. The climate shifted warmer, glaciers receded, conifers shifted north and deciduous forests and grasslands expanded. Animals that adapted to one environment weren’t able to survive the new ones and populations started to decline.
Genus Homo, who were all generalists with tool usage that exceeds any other known species in all of earth’s history to help them adapt to just about any environment on the planet, were able to expand into new parts of the world thanks to said receding glaciers. Animals they relied on migrated elsewhere to follow the plants they needed to survive, and humans followed them. With no way of understanding the concept of extinction or surveying the populations of other species, they likely did finish off some of the more vulnerable species faster than if they had just petered out on their own in the new climate.
I’m immediately suspicious of anything that condemns ancient humans based on modern knowledge. People hunted to survive and feed their families, just like every other predatory species. As I said they had no concept of conservation or quantitative ecology, at least certainly not on the scale we have today. They may have managed their local herds in ways we would consider ethical, but the climate continued to thin them anyway. Some species may have been nearly indistinguishable from the outside, especially where ranges overlap and intergrades happen, so people thought there were a lot more of them than there actually were (think of African bush and forest elephants today). But they almost definitely understood the importance of the survival of other species to that of their own and treated the natural world with far more respect than colonial sailors, Victorian haberdashers, or the modern logging industry.
As the saying goes, there’s three sides to every argument. Some people say climate change wiped everything out, some say humans did. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, or in this case, a combination of both.
Population shifts due to climate are expected.
The complete collapse and disappearance of large animal niches is not.
I believe the combination theory is common sense. What I care about is absolving humans of our continuous effect on wildlife. It started in the Pleistocene and hasn't stopped since.
I also remember reading even in new zealand it wasnt all hunting didnt the natives use wild fires to burn off brush or something causing some habitat loss ?
Because of climate change
Well, I'd say Giganotosaurus or Carcharodontosaurus were up there too among the most dangerous land carnivores that have ever existed, but yes, calling Tyrannosaurus Rex that way is not an overestimation at all, it really was one of the most OP things that nature has created (only confidently surpassed by humans).
Maip, Mapusaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Tyannotitan, etc.
Nothing to suggest that T.Rex was more dangerous.
That's why I've put the T-Rex in the same category as other large theropods; for a human being, I honestly doubt that much would change if you were being chased by any of the three I mentioned.
It did have better vision and largely speculated to be more intelligent
Vision: it had superior binocular vision, but only around that of a horse (55-60 degrees). So it wasn’t leaps and bounds better like often assumed, additionally giganotosaurus and Co would have similar binocular vision to crocodiles some falcons and birds of prey at 20-25 degrees and you’ll never see anyone claim they have poor vision. They both can precisely nail a small moving target with ease. So that’s not important.
Intellect: there’s zero proof it was smarter. That baboon study lacks ample evidence and has been beet heavily scrutinized. Unless you’re referring to the “crocodilian brain vs bird brain” with carnosaurs and coelosaurs, that’s still not accurate. Not only do larger predators have generally similar intelligence to one another but no legit studies have been done on either to my knowledge. But anyways, crocodiles and reptiles in general are vastly more clever than often assumed. They have been observed setting traps, placing rather coordinated hunts together, playing, and more.
So in short, neither of those points are meaningful.
Here are some sources on crocodile smarts.
https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/university-of-tennessee-study-finds-crocodiles-are-cleverer-than-previously-thought/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtWfhRHJK5U
To be fair, the speculation that the T-Rex was more intelligent simply because its brain was larger is outdated; we now know that brain size is not necessarily related to an animal's intelligence. In fact, the brain of the Carcharodontosaurus was quite similar to that of crocodiles, which we now know to be extremely intelligent, capable of using tools and tactics when hunting.
Elaborate this, if you may
Read this my friend:
https://www.science.org/content/article/scienceshot-first-example-tool-use-reptiles
https://www.sci.news/biology/science-crocodiles-alligators-hunt-groups-02203.html
Thanks for letting us know about this, this is amazing
brain size is however absolutely correlated to intelligence. at the very least, among mammals, brain size as a proxy for absolute neuron count is a valuable estimation of intelligence
So it shouldn’t be used on dinosaurs or crocodiles who are not mammals.
Actually, brain size has a weak correlation with intelligence, and it's not the end of the discussion by any means; otherwise, we would say that the sperm whale is the most intelligent animal on the planet because it has the largest brain (and it's a mammal).
You really need to go touch some grass I literally always see you freaking out when someone says anything remotely positive about T. rex. It is extremely cringe.
I’d say I recognize your name but I genuinely don’t know who you are.
Anyways, I’m not a T.Rex hater. It’s my favorite dinosaur, but I don’t glaze it to high heavens while downplaying other theropods.
Dangerous to what? Humans? A moderately sized theropod would be way more likely to see us as food than a Rex. To a fly, a spider might be the most dangerous carnivore.
Mosquitos would still be more dangerous. I'll just always find that both funny and sad.
*citation needed.
Humans causes a mass extinction. That's why we are scary.
The T-rex could probably kill every land animal in the Cenozoic and the Paleozoic. That's why they are scary.
You sound like a twelve year old. You have no sense of nuance or context.
You just decided to insult a stranger for no reason. Look in the mirror. And get off the internet for a while.
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big dog.... no titanosaurs exist in the cenozoic or paleozoic wtf
Ah, that’s on me. Misread ur comment and seemingly got my “zoics” mixed up at the same time lol.
I doubt that, tbh.
name a more dangerous
I don’t know about species from back then, so I don’t know. What I mean is that a bear kills about 15% of what they try to kill. A Lion is at 25-30%. Still really small. Orcas, the second highest kill ratio is just around 50%. The one with the highest kill % is the Black-Footed Cat, which is up around 70-80%
So I’m sure there were species back then they had a higher kill count that the T-Rex, percentage wise.
Dragonflies have the highest kill rate at 97%.
prey capture success rates don't really translate well into the notion of danger op is proposing
Really? That’s cool
Yeah I would recommend watching a video on it. Its really impressive. They don’t chase flying prey but calculate where it will be in the next second and intercept its flight path.
Epomis may be at 100% the last time I heard.
— Most powerful bite of any land animal
— Biggest carnivore that has ever walked the earth
— Had padding on its feet that allowed it to be very silent. This thing could sneak up on you
— Smarter than most dinosaurs
They said T.rex is overrated from getting all the praise but i say it earned that
exactlyyy
Humans being classified as carnivores is controversial to say the least. Not that I disagree
Humans are not carnivores, did I miss something?
Omnivores
It honestly depends on how you define carnivorous.
I believe humans are facultative carnivores. We need proteins and fats to stay alive (animals) but can eat plants if need be. Dogs are a good example. IMO we need meat to be healthy but we can definitely survive on plants.
Then we’d be either omnivores or mesocarnivores
Mesocarnivore fits better. I use faculative simply because it means we need meat but can eat plants.
We aren't carnivores, but we sure are predators
How so
We’re literally the single most oppressively dominant apex predator that has ever existed
How are we not carnivores is what I meant
Because we are omnivorous? Large portion of our diet is comprised that of plant matter, which in itself prevents us from being carnivores by definition
You can feed a dog mainly plants but that doesn’t make it omnivorous
I mean dogs are omnivores tho. And We are not talking about domesticated animals whose dietary habits are determined by their owners
Are we not? Isotopes show that ancient humans ate mostly megafauna. We have incredibly acidic stomachs and we absolutely need fats and proteins to stay alive. We have more in common with a wolf dietary wise than something like a chimp. I think it shows that humans were scavengers that evolved into facultative carnivorous apes.
We do have more meat based diet compared to chimps and earlier more basal Australopithecines, but that doesn't stop our species from being generally omnivorous animals. Though, it should be noted that omnivory is just like other dietary strategies, a spectrum rather than a clear cut line, although it is much wider spectrum compared to other two. I will use the examples of bears and pigs again. As they are both omnivores, but bears are generally more carnivorous.
Omnivores like us are scarier anyways. A human infestation can and will rape and pillage an entire ecosystem to death.
and has done... many times over...
106 out of 133 species above 150 kg went extinct in the last 20 thousand years thanks to us!!
Yeah shoulda said predator. But it’s a bit nitpicky
Perhaps you should have said hunter instead of carnivore so that people would understand your point.
With those arms? Nah
Yes because White sharks and Orcas have enormous arms for dispatching prey.
Just like Ichthyosaurs, Pliosaurs, Mosasaurs, ,Megatoothed sharks and raptorial Sperm whales like Livyaten.
Non venomous Snakes too. 🙄
Water = \ = land
Virtually no major ocean predators or even creatures have arms, so…dumb comparison.
Non venomous snakes have a very specific constriction method. We’ve seen it time and time again
I have never seen a major land predator with virtually useless arms. Granted nobody has seen it all, but I’d love to see how T-Rex did it. Logistically it seems challenging despite the massive head and banana sized teeth.
No it does not.
I was being sarcastic.
Ambush predation involves getting one good bite in to eventually if not immediately disable the prey.
Rex as an adult was obviously an ambush predator.
It is not a WWE wrestling match.
I feel the echos of a certain pervert who spread this myth around the world.
Horner has a lot to answer for.
He should stick to seducing his teenage students.
Rex was the most overpowered terrestrial macropredator ever to live.
Superb vision (possibly twice as sharp as an eagle) along with excellent olfactory abilities.
A large brain packed with avian type neurons (more densely than mammals have).
Railroad spike teeth, the most powerful bite of any land carnivore and built like the proverbial brick shithouse.
If the recent estimate for Goliath is correct it also outweighed any other theropod by at least several tons.
Fuck Jurassic World and it egregious sequels, it would never have needed any help.
Well, that is debatable
which land animals besides human would be dangerous to adult t rexes?
It depends on what you define as “dangerous”
Trex is one of the biggest dinosaurs for sure but dangerous more so can be associated with behavior and what the animal is most likely to do
You can argue that something like a black mamba can be as dangerous just due to its venom for example
Another example is a chimpanzee. They are much smaller than an orangutan but are much more dangerous to be around
Yup, very much so.
For example, in hunting circles (at least historically) the leopard is typically considered the most dangerous of the big cats, the cape buffalo more dangerous than either African rhino (and same goes for native large bovid vs native rhino in other places), and sloth bears have a reputation for punching above their weight as well. That's a rich man's game & I have no personal experience, but it seems to be the consensus.
In my own experience (being an avid reptile guy) I can say that I'd much rather deal with an intimidatingly large water or croc monitor vs a nile of half the size, an alligator snapper vs a common snapper, and so forth.
Hell....I used to hang out with a guy who weighed maybe 140lbs soaking wet with a belly full of bananas who grew up rough & tough, and multiple times I saw him thoroughly work over people twice his weight and a solid foot taller with ease, whether in a street fight or with gloves on.
Behavior rarely fossilizes, and attitude or "gameness" never does. For all we know, T. rex might have been a badass on paper through size and robusticity, but an absolute pussycat in real life compared to something else in the same size range (or smaller). Or maybe the time-travelling human would find some species of midsized ornithischians far more dangerous in actual practice than anything else in a given ecosystem....you never can tell, really.
A black mamba is not as dangerous as a T Rex. Not even in the same ball park. Neither is a chimp. Why are you making ridiculous comparisons
Because just something is bigger doesn’t make it dangerous
I never said a chimp was more dangerous than a rex. I clearly compared it to an orangutan and clearly mentioned size
And I pointed out a mamba because of its venom It’s probably not as big as most constrictors, but is much more dangerous to deal with. Proabably should’ve been more clear on that part, but my point still stands
We don’t know the behavior of a lot of theropods, so there is a chance there could’ve been plenty of smaller theropods more dangerous due to their claws or them just being faster or even smarter than a Rex
Do you seriously think a human with no assistive tools is at all dangerous to a mature several-tons carnivorous dinosaur?
Humans are obligate tool users. It is impossible to fairly compare humans to other animals without taking our tools into account
Who says anything about no assistive tools? Tools are an extension of our high intelligence
I like spinosaurus better.
until we know more about spino and how big it actually got it's hard to say how scary it was
No mention of the Neanderthals that used to bring down 🦣 😢
Dragonflies
Where are his lips
I dont know, I think the most dangerous land carnivorous of all time after human could definitely be debated . I feel like Utahraptor or Megaraptors might be top contenders for that spot or even modern day Siberian Tigers or Jaguars..etc
Have you ever seen a megaraptoran or an azdharchid?
I'd take my chances running from a trex than running from a siberian tiger.
Still not downplaying the place in the food chain Rexes occupied. Terrifying that nature could concoct such a beautiful and terrifying organism.
Most dangerous to what? And if you mean “in general”, the giant carcharodontosaurs rival it in lethality.
giant carchs are smaller than largest t-rexes
If you use the largest known Tyrannosaurus specimens, yes, but even then not by much (1-2 tons is not a lot when we are talking about animals weighing over 8 tons), and that’s before taking sample size into account.
I know Vividen is an assumed tyrant fan but according to his latest megatheropod update, adjusted volumetric work suggest the body mass of carchs was slightly overestimated and mass wise even subadult rexes seem to dwarf the competition.
I agree with you that carchs are underhyped but in terms of bulk and carnivory brute force, it's hard to underhype T. rex.
I’m familiar with the claim, but I’m not sure about some of the specifics.
One of the specimens he listed may flat-out just be smaller than the Giganotosaurus holotype. One of the specimens he mentions include “devil Rex.” Now, if this is referring to MOR 555, which is what Wikipedia refers to as “devil rex,” that specimen has repeatedly been considered to be the same size as the “Fran” Acrocanthosaurus specimen, an animal that by Vividens own admission, was dwarfed by the G. carolinii holotype. This claim supported by volumetric estimates from a decade ago up (Bates et al. 2009) to this year (Dempsey et al. 2025), and would put the specimen in the 6-7 tonne range, well below G. carolinii, which was between 8-9 tonnes (as in, greater than 8 tonnes, smaller than 9). Now, it is totally possible that “Devil Rex” refers to another specimen, but if not, he’s mistaken here. It’s also worth noting that this specimen is an unambiguous adult, and is actually older than a lot of other larger specimens, such as Scotty.
Saying that “even subadults are bigger than G. carolinii” is a little misleading here, since T. rex specimens vary wildly in size, such you can’t really correlate age with size like that. For instance, Scotty, one of the largest T. rex specimens, is actually a really young adult. By contrast, Trix, a specimen that by Vividen’s own admission, was about the same size as the G. carolinii holotype, was an extremely old specimen, itself a senescent adult only beat out by Sue in age. Beyond that, there are plenty of unambiguous adult rexes older than Scotty, including MOR 555 and CM 9380, which are outright smaller than the G. carolinii holotype, even by the Vividen’s own admission. So while it is technically true that there are young adult rexes that are bigger than Giganotosaurus, it’s just as accurate to say that there are also older adult T. rex’s that are smaller than the G. carolinii holotype, and imo, it’s just as important to point that part out as well. T. rex was just that variable in size, and given the new Meraxes specimen, theropods writ large were too.
Edit: source for T. rex age statements: Carr (2020)
Hi Mophandel! Good to see you here. Thought I'd clarify some statements.
Of course, I understand if you don't want to take my word for that. I do have permission from the member of our team who obtained the scans to share them, and many of the element comparisons are actually already public on Chinese forums. I plan on including more images of the direct comparisons in videos when relevant, and of course as the various papers release next year the sizes of these specimens will become more clear when using the same recon and measurement standards.
Good to see you here as well. Some clarifications and questions.
When I say adult here, I’m not referring to skeletal maturity. I’m referring to the stage in which growth is still occuring, yet is slowing. Refer to my citation of Carr (2020) for clarification, which has CM 9380 as one of the specimens in their dataset. I use “senescent” here as a stand in for skeletal maturity, I.e. growth has largely stopped. However, I suppose I should have clarified.
For the muscle-specific recon of the G. carolinii holotype, did they use the mount 1-to-1 or did they use a more up-to-date recon. That mount has some major issues, not just with the skull, but also with certain aspects that have a lot to do with mass, namely the scapulacoracoid (something we’ve talked about before).
With respect, I do actually find that hard to believe. However, for the sake of argument, let’s assume you’re right. Where would the G. carolinii holotype scale among T. rex specimens in ur opinion. Which is it bigger than, which is it the same size as?
This is actually my most important question. Which theropod is bigger isn’t that interesting to me, I usually only bring it up to staunch unnecessary hyperbolics like the post above. Plus, my interest is in carchs in general, not just Giganotosaurus, and seeing as there’s a new giant Meraxes specimen on the way, a 9+ tonne carch is on the horizon anyways. However, I am much more interested in how these carchs operated, I.e. biomechanics. Dr. Snively mentioned in a 2025 dispatch that there was ongoing biomechanical investigations regarding carchs, seemingly regarding their akinetic cervical apparatus (which based on the Taurovenator paper, was something that was a synapomorphy of carcharodontosaurines in general, if not giganotosaurins). Do you have any insight ab that, if there are new publications in the works etc.
Always a pleasure. I enjoy your insights and inquiries.
Good to know both regarding the accuracy of th reconstruction and the size of the holotype. I’ll adjust my opinions regarding the holotype’s size accordingly. This still doesn’t change too much, the latter specimen you mention, “Tufts-Love,” is an essentially on the cusp of becoming a proper “adult” T. rex (Carr (2020) puts it literally on the boundary between “young adult” and “adult” in their growth curve) while AMNH 5027 is regarded as a proper adult as well. That, and given statements regarding CM 9380 being “barely” bigger than it, the claim regarding it being the size of an adult Rex still holds, albeit it needs to be tailored somewhat.
It's definitely always important to clarify definitions when it comes to ontogeny! Ideally the Giga osteology will include a histology. I tend not to use Carr 2020 since it included Nano specimens and didn't include as much histological backing for ages as I would have liked, but I'm interested to see how that changes
Isn't there also on the horizon Sue being more massive than Sue ?
You bet. That's in the same abstract actually
Even the new Giga recon is around 8 tons, so it's not significantly smaller than estimates from last year.
Mosquitoes are more dangerous.
if i put you alone in a 100 meter field. and you had to choose the animal that would spend the day in that field with you fora day. u choosing rex or mosquito??
T.rex would be a pretty quick clean death. One bite and the end. Practically no pain prob.
What about saw-scaled vipers?
Omnivore. People are omnivores
im not. i only eat pussy
And the second greatest predator must take him down...
idk why people are hating it seems pretty reasonable that a t. rex poses the greatest threat to the most land animals among terrestrial carnivores. if we allow gregariousness, humans definitely take it, and if we have legitimate gregarious megatheropods they take it. otherwise, in single combat, i think ops stance is pretty reasonable. you guys just have silly notions of nuance
Why do you think it would be able to beat other megatheropod single handedly? Bite force, agility, body size, intelligence etc.? None of those are really the factors you think it is.
bite force is only useful if you land the bite at all, and so bringing it up presupposes that the animal lands a bite in the first place, which isn’t a guarantee.
agility, at close quarters, is a non-factor at these size scales. As agile as T. rex was, it was an 8-10 tonne carnivore. Dodging a up-close, near point-blank bite from a carch, which had a neck morphology well suited for rapid striking, is impossible for a carnivore that big
intelligence; I don’t know how smart you think T. rex was (spoilers, probably not as smart as you think) or how dumb you think carchs are (spoilers, probably not as dumb as you think, especially given that we evidence of gregariousness in at least one taxa), but neither of these animals are so smart that that intelligence actually has an impact on how combat plays out — weaponry is the only deciding factor. Throw a leopard against a chimp and ask the chimp how much its intelligence matters.
More importantly, it seems like you think a T. rex would be able to tank a bite from a big carch unscathed. These weren’t animals operating by a “death-by-a-thousand-cuts.” Rather, these were animals with nearly two meter long jaws, with that entire length adorned with ziphodont teeth, who were dispatching their prey with a handful of devastating, cleaving bites that could disembowel prey or tear open their throats in seconds. Look up the damage a Komodo dragon can do to a deer, thats the kind of damage carchs were inflicting.
Rest assured, when a carch gets its jaws around the neck of a T. rex, none of that bite force, intelligence or agility will matter; it’ll be useless as the allosauroid slices open the tyrannosaurs neck ear-to-ear and bleed it out. Moreover, the greater bulk of a T. rex won’t really allow it to shake off a carch mid-bite; the lower agility of carchs also makes their footing more stable and the imbricating cervical verts act to resist lateral stresses. The only thing that saves it is if it gets its jaws around the carch first, which kinda sums up my thoughts on the matter. It’s a 50/50, with whoever gets the first bite winning (at size parity).
The only worthwhile point is size, but even then, with as small of a sample size as we have for big carchs, it’s not really a given that T. rex really was bigger than other big carchs. The one good Giganotosaurus specimen we do have is already the same size as some senescent T. rex specimens. The probability that it could reach the size of the biggest T. rex’s isn’t that far fetched.
Combine Leborn fans, Messi fans, Taylor swift fans and multiply it by 10 and you will reach 50% of what the average Rex glazer can produce.
And also the most overrated land carnivore of all time
it's correctly rated. It's one of the scariest and most powerful animals ever. It would trivially destroy polar bears and hippos.
I meant in comparison with other theropods
Even then it can only be fairly compared to other members in its clade and it TOWERS above the likes of Yuyutyranus.
I know its hip and cool to hate on the established norm but T-Rex was just HIM. Absolutely insane species nature popped out. If they had thumbs shit would have been different.
Yeah it’s actually both of those animals that are heavily overrated.
As far as I'm concerned the dinosaurs didn't reach overkill potential.
How is it overrated when it was THE apex predator during it’s time and dominated it’s ecosystem for like 3 ~ 4 Million years straight.
T REX THE FIERCEST PREDATOR TO EVER LIVE (except for satoru gojo of course)
Since when have we been labelling humans as carnivores
SMILODON POPULATOR....
the most dangerous land carnivore ever
is actually the mosquito
How do you even quantify "most dangerous." T. rex only got that big thanks to enormous prey , a bear is an equally formidable predator in its environment .
Probably it’s not T-Rex. But Maip is
How so? That's a very specific choice
Well, I’m saying overall Maip is more deadly than T-Rex, who’s main victim were heavily built ornithopods, so he was heavily specialized ambush hunter
How do you feel those compare to Carcharadontosaurids who predated on titanosaurs?
Chances are somewhat equal
Ornithopods that were contemporary with Mail were not more heavily built than Ornithopods that lived with T. rex, what are you on?
Spinosaurus arguably more dangerous
Only if you believe the utter bullshit of JP3 engineered by that perverted rex hater Horner.
I would give Spinosaurus exactly a Slim and None chance.
And Slim just left town.