How Much Force Could a T. rex Bite Deliver?

The Tyrannosaurus rex in Jurassic Park bit right through a Ford Explorer. But what about the real dinosaurs? It turns out that T. rex really had jaw power to make up for those useless little arms. They chewed through the bones of their prey, which is unusual even among dinosaurs.

Bone crushing—extreme osteophagy in the scientific parlance—is a trait exhibited by just a handful of mammalian scavengers and predators today, including the spotted hyena and the gray wolf. Osteophagy is almost unheard of in reptiles; their long, conical teeth don’t tend to clamp together to deliver the crushing forces needed to shatter bone. And yet Gregory Erickson, FSU paleontologist and co-author of the new study published today in Scientific Reports, has long observed that the bite marks on the brutalized carcasses of T.rex lunches indicate a bone-chewer.

That's not the only evidence pointing to the massive power of the T. rex bite. Read about the research and findings of T. rex jaw strength at Gizmodo.


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