September 20, 2012 Tyrannosaurus rex is a perfectly-named
dinosaur. There is no better title for a forty-foot long, knife-
toothed predator that was the biggest carnivore in its ecosystem
and, sadly, one of the last non-avian dinosaurs. For over a
century, the tyrant has been the quintessential dinosaur, and
the fantastic nature of the creature has even ensnared
paleontologists. No non-avian dinosaur has been as celebrated or
well-studied, and all that attention continues to yield
unexpected discoveries about how this dinosaur actually lived.
For one thing, T. rex had the most formidable bite of any
creature to walk the earth. In the new issue of Smithsonian
magazine, I have a short profile on the dinosaur’s devastating
bite. The piece is based on a Biology Letters study published
earlier this year by Karl Bates of the University of Liverpool
and Peter Falkingham of the University of Manchester, both in
England, that estimated that the bite force of an adult T. rex
could be up to 12,800 pounds. That’s about th