Huge meat-eating dinosaurs that stalked a vast floodplain some 150 million years ago in what is now Portugal left behind traces of their progeny: eggshells.

Some of the eggshells, which belonged to two Jurassic-Era theropods, or a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, once harbored embryos of Torvosaurus, the largest predator of its day.

"It was the equivalent of the T. rex in the Cretaceous," said study co-author Vasco Ribeiro, a paleontologist at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal.

Ribeiro and his colleagues aren’t sure how the eggs came to be abandoned.

Delicate finds

Because they are so delicate, dinosaur eggs are a relatively rare find. Paleontologists unearthed some of the most primitiveTorovosaurus embryos ever found earlier this year, and there have been occasional dinosaur nursery finds, including a clutch of hundreds of dinosaur egg fragments found in Spain. [Image Gallery: Dinosaur Daycare]

Ribeiro and his colleagues found the eggshell fragments at two separate sites, both of which were part of the Lourinhã Formation, a geological formation known for its rich Jurassic dinosaur nest sites. During that time period, the area was a floodplain that cycled through dry seasons and monsoon rains.

The eggshells were shattered and there was no trace of the dinosaur embryos that once coiled inside. But by analyzing the size, shape and texture of the eggshells, the team was able to deduce which animals left those eggs so long ago.

The shells found at one site came from spherical eggs that were about 6 inches (15 centimeters) in diameter. They likely belonged to a Torvosaurus, a massive, bipedal dinosaur that grew up to 36 feet (11 meters) tall.

The eggs at the other site were harder to identify. But the researchers believe the eggs may have contained embryos ofLourinhanosaurus antunesi, a theropod that was about 15 feet (4.5 m) long when full-grown. When intact, the eggs from that site would have been about 5 inches (13 cm) along the long axis and 3.5 inches (9 cm) along the short axis.

Neglected or protected?

The researchers don't know exactly how the eggs came to be abandoned.

One possibility is that the ancient carnivores laid many eggs and simply left those eggs to their own fates. Other researchers argue that these dinosaurs, like crocodiles, were attentive parents during embryonic development, guarding their clutches from predators.

Either way, once the hatchlings emerged, they were probably on their own, Ribeiro said.

"We have no evidence that mother dinosaur took food to the nest or protected the nest," Ribeiro told LiveScience.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow LiveScience @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on LiveScience.com.

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A new study suggests the worst possible news for fans of Jurassic Park: it's not possible to isolate DNA from amber-preserved insects.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen tried to isolate DNA from a preserved 10,000 year-old bee and one that was about 60 years old.

The bees were actual preserved in Copal, not amber. Copal is the precursor to amber, when the tree resin hasn't fully hardened. It is still slightly gummy and is much younger than true amber.

They were able to get some DNA data, but they weren't able to match it to any known DNA sequences — a sign the data that they got was an artifact of their procedure. Finding that the insects in copal weren't able to provide DNA means bad news for people hoping to get DNA from amber-preserved insects.

Previous experiments that have claimed to isolate and amplify DNA from million-year-old amber are probably just false positives from contamination with modern DNA, the authors said.  

The authors write in the paper, "our results raise further doubts about claims of DNA extraction from fossil insects in amber, many millions of years older than copal."

The study was published in the journal PLoS ONE on September 11.

This finding confirms an earlier study that estimated the half-life of DNA to be about 521 years. That number means that half of the DNA in a sample is lost every 521 years. The researchers estimated that it would be almost impossible to get enough DNA information from fossils older than 1.5 million years to reconstruct a genome.

So going back to the Jurassic era, which ended about 145 million  years ago, it would be virtually impossible to find enough intact DNA to reconstruct a dinosaur genome. 

Looks like that eccentric Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer will never get to live out his dream of building a real-life Jurassic park. 

These findings are on top of plenty of other scientific problems with the movie. First of all, the mosquito they pictured in amber wasn't even the right species— they picked the only species of mosquito that doesn't even suck blood. 

That being said, we are still psyched about Jurassic World (the new name for the upcoming Jurassic Park IV)

SEE ALSO: Scientists Want To Bring 24 Animals Back From Extinction

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The dinosaur skull bought by actor Nicolas Cage after he outbid fellow A-lister Leonardo DiCaprio could now return to bite him where it hurts, after it is apparently part of a criminal inquiry into illegally imported fossil remains, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Cage paid $276,000 for a Tyrannosaurus bataar skull in July 2007, which the Sunday Telegraph claimed saw him locked in an "intense" auction battle with DiCaprio. Now the paper has followed up their story by saying they have discovered the skull was provided to auctioneers IM Chait by Eric Prokopi, a "commercial paleontologist" who recently pleaded guilty to conspiring to import illegally obtained fossils from Mongolia.

After a complete example of Tyrannosaurus bataar was returned to Mongolian authorities earlier this year after it had been put up for auction, attention has now turned to other items from Prokopi's stock.

David Herskowitz, director of IM Chait's natural history department at the time of the sale, told the Telegraph: "Nicolas Cage's specimen came from Prokopi", and the US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE), responsible for investigating smuggling, is now believed to be assessing if other Prokopi-supplied items are suspect.

• Nicolas Cage interview: 'People think I'm not in on the joke'
• Nicolas Cage: five best moments

This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

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A newly discovered dinosaur has been identified as a cousin of the iconic Tyrannosaurus and is helping paleontologists flesh out the branches of the T. rex family tree.

Lythronax argestes — the first part of the name means "king of gore," and the second refers to a wind from the Southwest described in ancient Greek poetry — stalked the Earth about 80 million years ago, rubbing elbows and tails with giant crocodiles, duck-billed dinosaurs and three-horned dinosaurs like Diaboceratops. 

The 2.5-ton L. argestes was 24 feet long and resided on an island continent known as Laramidia, which was formed by a large shallow sea that bisected much of present-day North America.

Now, one particular specimen of L. argestes has turned up in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. It's the oldest member of the tyrannosaur family ever discovered. Researchers from the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and the University of Alberta described the titanic tyrannosaurid in a paper published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE.

What makes L. argestes so special? Its head contains features that are unique among similar dinosaurs of the time, and which bring it closer to T. rex in form. L. argestes has a shorter snout and a skull that's wider at the back. This particular skull shape has its advantages, according to Mark Loewen, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the lead author on the paper.

SOURCE: Loewen et al. "Tyrant dinosaur evolution tracks the rise and fall of Late Cretaceous oceans." PLoS ONE published online 6 November 2013.

SEE ALSO: Why Your Palms Get Sweaty When You're Nervous

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An enormous carnivorous dinosaur that once roamed North America kept Tyrannosaurus rex from achieving its potential for millions of years, a new discovery suggests.

The new dinosaur, dubbed Siats meekerorum, is part of a group of giant predators known as carcharodontosaurs, and it's only the second of this group to be discovered in North America.

North Carolina State University paleontologist Lindsay Zanno discovered the Siats bones eroding out of a hillside in Utah in 2008.

"It's easily the most exciting thing that I've found so far," Zanno, who heads the paleontology lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science, told LiveScience.

Lizard kings

T. rex lived in the late Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago. Paleontologists know a good deal about the "tyrant lizard" and its ecosystem in North America, just as they know lots about the Late Jurassic period, the time of such famous dinos as Allosaurus, Apatosaurus and Stegosaurus, Zanno said. But between the two, there's a 60-million-year gap. [Image Gallery: The Life of T. Rex]

"There's a huge gap in our understanding of what lived in between those two really unique dinosaur ecosystems," Zanno said.

For that reason, Zanno and her colleagues focused on 98-million-year-old rocks, right in the middle of that gap. As they excavated Siets from these rocks, they quickly realized they had something good. Two-legged theropod dinosaurs like T. rex have thin-walled bones. The Siats specimen shared this feature.

At the time Siats reigned, T. rex had not yet evolved. Its tyrannosaur ancestors were scrawny things, no bigger than large dogs, Zanno said. At some point in the Late Cretaceous, Siats went extinct, clearing the ecosystem of its top predator and giving tyrannosaurs the room to evolve into giants like the recently discovered Lythronax and T. rex.

Lost world

Siats (pronounced see-atch) was a bruiser. The bones Zanno discovered belong to a juvenile, and conservative estimates suggest it was about 30 feet (10 meters) long and weighed 9,000 lbs. (4,000 kilograms). An adult would have put on another couple thousand pounds, Zanno said. [25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]

"It's gigantic," she said.

T. rex, at twice that weight, is still the undisputed giant of North American Cretaceous predators, but Siats is in the running for the No. 2 spot with another carcharodontosaur, Acrocanthosaurus, Zanno said.

Acrocanthosaurus lived about 10 million years before Siats, and Siats is in a different branch of the carcharodontosaur family, the Neovenatoridae. This is the first time a member of the Neovenatoridae has been found in North America.

In Siats' day, what is now Utah was marshy and wet, positioned along the coast of the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow sea that once bisected North America.

The researchers recovered most of Siats' backbone and tail, along with portions of its hip and back leg. They've also found at least three other new dinosaurs in the same-aged rock, Zanno said.

"In the next three to five years we really hope to be able to bring to light more of what this lost ecosystem looked like," she said.

The researchers report their finding today (Nov. 22) in the journal Nature Communications.

SEE ALSO: Men And Women Have Completely Different Ways Of Communicating

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The tiny, intact skeleton of a baby rhinoceroslike dinosaur has been unearthed in Canada.

The toddler was just 3 years old and 5 feet (1.5 meters) long when it wandered into a river near Alberta, Canada, and drowned about 70 million years ago. The beast was so well-preserved that some of its skin left impressions in the nearby rock.

The fossil is the smallest intact skeleton ever found from a group of horned, plant-eating dinosaurs known as ceratopsids, a group that includes the iconic Triceratops. [See Images of the Baby Dino Skeleton]

Rare find

Finding intact baby dinosaurs is incredibly rare.

"The big ones just preserve better: They don't get eaten, they don't get destroyed by animals," said study co-author Philip Currie, a paleobiologist at the University of Alberta. "You always hope you're going to find something small and that it will turn out to be a dinosaur."

Paleontologists had unearthed a few individual bones from smaller ceratopsids in the past. But without intact juvenile skeletons, such bones aren't very useful, as scientists don't really know how each bone changes during each stage of the animals' lives, Currie said.

The team was bone-hunting in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta when Currie came upon what looked like a turtle shell sticking out from a hillside. Upon closer inspection, the fossil turned out to be a frill, the bony decorative headgear that surrounds the back of the head in ceratopsids.

When the team excavated, they found the fossilized skeleton of a tiny dinosaur they identified as a Chasmosaurus belli, a species commonly found in the area.

Drowning victim

Amazingly, almost the entire skeleton was intact, although sometime in the past, a sinkhole had opened up below the beast and the forelimbs had fallen away into an abyss. The fossil was so well-preserved that the tiny, rosettelike pattern on its skin was imprinted in the rock below the dinosaur.

Based on its size, the team estimates the dinosaur was about 3 years old — just out of infancy — when it perished. (Like humans, these dinosaurs typically take about 20 years to reach maturity, at which point they have 6.5-foot-long [2 meters] skulls and weigh 3 to 4 tons.)

The fossil was found in sediments associated with watery environments and didn't have any bite marks or trace of injury, so it's likely the dino toddler likely drowned.

"I think it may have just gotten trapped out of its league in terms of water current," Currie told LiveScience.

Soon after, the baby dinosaur was buried by sediments and left untouched for millions of years.

Growth rates

Aside from being cute, the new fossil helps paleontologists understand how these plant-eating dinosaurs grew. Paleontologists can then better identify and age the myriad individual bones from juveniles discovered over the years.

Already, the team has learned that Chasmosaur juvenile frills look different from those on adults, and that limb proportions don't change much as they grow. Predatory theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex have disproportionately long limbs as juveniles, presumably to keep up with the adults in the pack.

By contrast, "in Chasmosaurians, the proportions are essentially the same, which probably means the adults were probably never moving that fast," Currie said. "There was never priority for these animals to run to keep up with the adults."

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

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Clive Palmer has officially opened the “world’s largest dinosaur park”, Palmersaurus, at his Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast today.

The park features 160 life-size, life-like dinosaurs, a dozen of which are rides while the other exhibits have “buttons” which switch on the dinosaurs so “they will go through their routine moves and entertain and thrill you”, Palmer Coolum Resort general manager Bill Schoch told The Sunshine Coast Daily.

Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin were there for the opening, as Palmer tweeted his appreciation for their support.

Thank you Terri, Bindi & Robert Irwin for helping open Palmersaurus @PalmerCoolum today. Proud day. #sunshinecoastpic.twitter.com/FWZIIj7j5S

— Clive Palmer (@CliveFPalmer) December 14, 2013

Schoch told The Sunshine Coast paper the park “will be a family entertainment area that will put smiles on lots of faces.”

Here are some of the pictures visitors are taking of Palmersaurus:

Lots of people visit @CliveFPalmer dinosaur park on opening day @abcsunshine@abcnews#roarpic.twitter.com/b2wlz4xMqr

— Bruce Atkinson (@atko17) December 14, 2013

Seriously roarsome. Nice work @CliveFPalmer@PalmerCoolum#roarsomepic.twitter.com/LIKGXkJI3z

— Patrick Williams (@thepatricktimes) December 14, 2013

Read more here.

SEE ALSO: Australian Billionaire Clive Palmer Is Building An Exact Replica Of The Titanic

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An ancient, predatory creature known as the devil frog may have looked even scarier than previously thought.

The monster frog, Beelzebufo ampinga, lived during the Cretaceous Period in what is now Africa, and sported spiky flanges protruding from the back of its skull and plate-like armor down its back, almost like a turtle shell.

"We knew it was big; we knew it was almost certainly predatory," said study co-author Susan Evans, a paleontologist at the University College London. "What the new material has shown us is that it was even more heavily armored than we imagined."

The massive frog's spiked body armor may have helped it fend off the dinosaurs and crocodiles that prowled during that time. [See Photos of the Devil Frog and Other Freaky Frogs]

Elusive lineage

The researchers first discovered a few bone fragments from a mystery frog in Madagascar in 1998, but it wasn't until 2008 that they had enough pieces to identify the species, which they dubbed the devil frog, or Beelzebufo ampinga. The massive frog lived between 70 million and 65 million years ago.

When the team analyzed the frog's morphology, they found that physically, it fit in with a family of horned frogs called the Ceratophryidae, which are now found only in South America.

But to reach Madagascar from South America, the frogs would have needed to hop along a passageway, possibly through Antarctica, that linked the two landmasses. But that route was submerged underwater by 112 million years ago, Evans said.

That would mean that devil frogs must have diverged from their South American cousins prior to that submergence, pushing back the origin of Ceratophryidae by more than 40 million years, Evans said.

More specimens

Over the course of the next five years, the team found several more bone fragments of Beelzebufo ampinga. In the new study, they combined all of the fragments to do a much more complete reconstruction of the devil frog.

The new analysis confirms the frog's lineage in the Ceratophryidae family. It also downgrades the amphibian's size — instead of being the biggest frog that ever lived, it may be closer to the size of an African bullfrog, which grows to about 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) across.

Even so, the analysis reveals that the devil frog was even fiercer-looking than previously thought. Past studies had suggested it had a huge, globular head; sharp teeth; and short back legs, but the spiky flanges and the plates embedded in its skin were a surprising discovery.

The frogs may have hunted like African bullfrogs, hiding before pouncing on a small mammal.

It's not clear what the frogs used the body armor for, but one possibility is that the sculptured bones may have been an adaptation to a dry environment that allowed the frogs to burrow underground, where they were less likely to bake in the hot sun, Evans said.

But the armor may also have been protection.

"There were an awful lot of things roaming around that would have liked a bite out of a big, juicy frog," such as dinosaurs, crocodiles and even strange mammals that once lived on the Gondwana supercontinent, Evans told LiveScience.

The findings were published Jan. 28 in the journal PLOS ONE.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

• Image Gallery: 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts
• Pictures: Cute and Colorful Frog Images
• In Photos: The Wacky Animals of Madagascar

SEE ALSO: New Dinosaur Called 'The King Of Gore' Discovered

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Perhaps casually tossing the word “extinction” into the subtitle of a blockbuster franchise that was once presumed dead (victorious in death, but still dead in theory!) is a bad idea.

The (presumably) first film in Michael Bay’s recently relaunched Transformers franchise is set to hit theaters this summer, and the series is starting to go great guns on this marketing thing, launching a full-scale trailer attack during yesterday’s dismal Super Bowl.

While the game may have disappointed, the first trailer for Transformers: Age of Extinction actually looked quite good (well, it does look like a Transformers trailer, but a good one in the context of things), and it featured the arrival of some robotic, transform-y new characters that might just save this whole outing (sorry, Mark Wahlberg). 

The Dinobots are here! In the Transformers universe (where, yes, we’re betting Shia LaBeouf actually is still famous), the Dinobots are Autobots whose transformational mode makes them appear to be dinosaurs or similarly prehistoric beasts.

Basically, no, they are not turning into planes, trains, or automobiles. Dinobots also get to bot out, thanks to their ability to fight in “robot mode” (much like evil Decepticons). Despite being Autobots by nature and literal design (the original origin story for the Dinobots actually holds that they were built by Wheeljack and Ratchet on Earth), they tend to be independent and interested in their own pursuits and aims. They are wild cards. And they are also dinosaurs that are also robots that are also born from a different universe. They are dinosaur-robot-aliens. They are also exactly what the franchise needs.

Financially speaking, the Transformers film franchise remains a juggernaut. The first three films in the trilogy have made nearly $3 billion at the global box office since the franchise first kicked off in 2007 and, at this point, going back for fourths or fifths or even, God forbid, sixths is sort of all gravy. These films will pull in an audience and lots of cash, and even if the returns start to diminish (both in terms of financial gain and actual cinematic quality), this is still a multi-billion dollar franchise. But there still needs to be something different to intrigue burnt out fans and pull in new audiences.

DINOSAURS, OBVIOUSLY. THE BOTTIER, THE BETTER.

The Dinobots are not only interesting to newbies, but they are a beloved bit of Transformers lore that big time fans have long wanted to see on the big screen. And, again, they are alien dinosaur robots who were made by a bunch of other alien robots, which is bizarre and weird and the precise sort of the thing a franchise as big and crunchy and loud as the Transformers needs to ratchet things up. Really, after destroying entire American cities, what’s left?

A robot who looks like a T. rex, that’s what.

It also helps that the Dinobots can potentially serve as their own draw, as the new film swaps out Shia “I Am No Longer Famous” LaBeouf for some new stars, effectively removing a bit of familiarity that some film fans might still be beholden to (LaBeouf’s fame level notwithstanding). The new film stars Wahlberg and Nicola Peltz as a father-daughter duo that reportedly “make a discovery that brings down Autobots and Decepticons – and a paranoid government official – on them.” Is it the Dinobots? We bet it’s the Dinobots.

While LaBeouf and company led the original trilogy, new blood is always a solid way to mix things up when it comes to new installments, but the “discovery” of something nutty sure harkens back to the first film, when LaBeouf’s character Sam Witwicky “discovered” Bumblebee on a used car lot operated by Bernie Mac, while a simultaneous alien invasion was occurring on the other side of the world. Thematic continuation!

Here, take a look for yourself, and tell us you don’t want to see alien robot dinosaurs attacking other alien robots on the big screen (come on, guys, it’s popcorn theater!):

Transformers: Age of Extinction will open on June 27th.

SEE ALSO: Here's The First 'Transformers' Trailer Shown During The Super Bowl

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Director Colin Trevorrow's sci-fi thriller Jurassic World is gearing up to star shooting in Hawaii and Louisiana. Production is scheduled to begin in Oahu for four weeks in April, followed by two weeks on Kauai. It will then move to Louisiana for 11 weeks beginning in June.

Plot details are few, but the highly anticipated project will star Chris Pratt, Ty Simpkins and Bryce Dallas Howard. Colin Trevorrow is directing from a script he wrote with Derek Connolly. Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and Pat Crowley will be producing.

The director also announced that the film will be shot in 35mm and 65mm. Check out what he said on his twitter page.

Honored to be working with cinematographer John Schwartzman on Jurassic World, shooting this April on 35mm and 65mm film. @Kodak@Panavision

— Colin Trevorrow (@colintrevorrow) February 6, 2014

Jurassic World comes to theaters June 12th, 2015 and stars Ty Simpkins, Idris Elba,Bryce Dallas Howard, Nick Robinson, Chris Pratt. The film is directed by Colin Trevorrow.

SEE ALSO: 'Lost' actress Evangeline Lily may join 'Ant-Man'

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Studying dinosaur bones and physiology can only teach us so much about how dinosaurs actually walked the Earth. Because dinosaurs called theropods are related to modern birds, a few researchers thought they could study how they walk using chickens.

Theropods include dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor, but they also ranged in size all the way down to tiny chicken-sized raptors covered in feathers. Theropods and modern birds also both have spongy air-filled bones, wishbones, and feathers and lay eggs and watch over them.

Theropods first appeared during the late Triassic period about 230 million years ago. During the Jurassic, birds evolved from ancient theropods, and today are represented by 9,900 living species.

To make chickens change their gait, the researchers added a tail, which looks surprisingly like a toilet plunger, to their butts. This changed their center of gravity, and made them walk differently.

You can see the difference below:Here's how a chicken walks normally, without the "tail:"

And here's one walking like a dinosaur, with his "tail:"The finding?

"Our results support the hypothesis that gradual changes in the location of the centre of mass resulted in more crouched hindlimb postures and a shift from hip-driven to knee-driven limb movements through theropod evolution," the researchers write in the study, published in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In Europe 150 million years ago, this dude was the biggest, baddest bully in town.

Two scientists in Portugal announced on Wednesday that they have identified the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever found in Europe, a 33-foot-long (10-meter-long) brute called Torvosaurus gurneyi that was the scourge of its domain in the Jurassic Period.

"It was indeed better not to cross the way of this large, carnivorous dinosaur," said paleontologist Christophe Hendrickx of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Museu da Lourinhã in Portugal.

Torvosaurus gurneyi was an imposing beast. It was bipedal, weighed four to five tons, had a skull almost 4 feet long, boasted powerful jaws lined with blade-shaped teeth four inches long, and may have been covered with an early type of feather, Hendrickx said.

"Torvosaurus gurneyi was obviously a super predator feeding on large prey like herbivorous dinosaurs," Hendrickx said.

Remains of the new species were unearthed in Portugal by an amateur fossil hunter in 2003 in the rock cliffs of Lourinhã, a small town about 45 miles north of Lisbon, Hendrickx said. He said fossilized embryos probably belonging to this species were identified last year in Portugal.

The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

At the time that Torvosaurus prowled the landscape, the region was a lush river delta with abundant fresh water and vegetation. The area teemed with dinosaurs and flying reptiles known as pterosaurs, primitive birds, crocodiles, turtles and mouse-sized mammals, according to paleontologist Octávio Mateus, also of Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Museu da Lourinhã.

Plant-eating dinosaurs living in the area included the huge, long-necked Lusotitan, the armored, tank-like Dracopelta and the spiky-tailed Miragaia, Mateus added.

The two scientists said this is the second species of the genus Torvosaurus. The other one, Torvosaurus tanneri, lived at the same time in North America. It was known from the states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and was identified in 1979.

Its genus name, Torvosaurus, means "savage lizard." Its species name, gurneyi, honors James Gurney, the author and illustrator of the popular "Dinotopia" book series.

Torvosaurus gurneyi was not the only meat-eating dinosaur in its neighborhood. For example, there was a European species of the well-known North American Jurassic predator Allosaurus, but the Torvosaurus found in Portugal was larger.

Torvosaurus gurneyi not only is the largest known meat-eating dinosaur from Europe, but is the biggest land predator of any kind ever found on the continent, they added.

There were larger dinosaur carnivores elsewhere, however.

Tyrannosaurus in North America, Carcharodontosaurus and Spinosaurus in North Africa and Giganotosaurus in Argentina all were bigger, but appeared on Earth much later than Torvosaurus, during the Cretaceous Period that followed the Jurassic Period.

"This animal, Torvosaurus, was already a fossil for 80 million years before the T. rex ever walked the Earth," Mateus said.

During the Jurassic Period from about 200 million years ago to 145 million years ago, carnivorous dinosaurs generally were medium-sized, with an average length of about 7 to 16 feet. Larger ones like Torvosaurus, Allosaurus and Saurophaganax arrived in the late Jurassic Period.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Grant McCool)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If you're a dinosaur with a nickname as funky as "the chicken from hell," you had better be able to back it up.

A dinosaur called Anzu wyliei that scientists identified on Wednesday from fossils found in North Dakota and South Dakota does just that. It had a head shaped like a bird's, a toothless beak, an odd crest on its cranium, hands with big sharp claws, long legs for fast running and was probably covered in feathers.

It is the largest North American example of a type of bird-like dinosaur well known from Asia. Its extensive remains offer a detailed picture of the North American branch of these dinosaurs that had remained mysterious since their first bones were found about a century ago, the scientists said.

What would someone think if they encountered this creature that lived 66 million years ago? "I don't know whether they would scream and run away, or laugh, because it is just an absurd-looking monster chicken," said University of Utah paleontologist Emma Schachner, one of the researchers.

Anzu wyliei measured about 11 feet long, 5 feet tall at the hip and weighed about 440 to 660 pounds (200 to 300 kg), the researchers said.

"It has the nickname 'the chicken from hell.' And that's a pretty good description," said paleontologist Matt Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who led the research published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"If you could get in a time machine and go back to Western North America at the end of the age of dinosaurs and see this thing, I would say your first reaction might be, 'What a weird looking bird,'" Lamanna added. "It would not look like most people's conception of a dinosaur."

Scientists think birds arose much earlier from small feathered dinosaurs. The earliest known bird is 150 million years old. This dinosaur's bird-like traits included a beak, hollow leg bones and air spaces in its backbone, paleontologist said Hans-Dieter Sues of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

Its bizarre head crest resembled that of the cassowary, a flightless bird native to Australia and New Guinea.

Fossils of feathers are extremely rare and they were not found with any of the three partial skeletons of Anzu wyliei. But the researchers believe it had feathers based on fossils of close relatives from China that have clear evidence of them.

ASIAN COUSINS

It closely resembles its Asian cousins like Oviraptor, whose fossils have been found brooding over a clutch of its eggs in a bird-like manner. The Asian part of the family includes many well-preserved examples, from ones as small as a turkey to one even bigger than Anzu wyliei. The North American branch until now had been represented by largely fragmentary remains.

Anzu wyliei lived at the sunset of the age of dinosaurs, not long before an enormous meteorite is thought to have struck Earth about 65.5 million years ago and wiped them out along with hordes of other creatures, while sparing many birds.

It lived in a humid, warm, low-lying environment dotted with rivers and swamps that may have looked like the Louisiana bayou. It was lush with vegetation and plant-eating dinosaurs like the horned Triceratops, armored Ankylosaurus, dome-headed Pachycephalosaurus and duck-billed Edmontosaurus.

But also hanging around the neighborhood was one of the fiercest predators in Earth's history, Tyrannosaurus rex.

Anzu wyliei may have been an omnivore, munching on leaves, fruits or flowers while also swallowing the occasional mammal foolish enough to cross its path, the researchers said.

It probably needed to be careful not to end up on someone else's menu. "To a T. rex, this thing would not look like a 'chicken from hell.' It would look like lunch," Lamanna said.

Its genus name, Anzu, is named after a feathered demon in Sumerian mythology. Its species name, wyliei, honors the grandson of a trustee of the Carnegie museum in Pittsburgh where the lead researcher works.

The three sets of bones - which together included almost all parts of the skeleton - come from a region famed for dinosaur remains known as the Hell Creek Formation of the Dakotas and Montana. Two of the three sets of remains had partially healed injuries, perhaps the remnants of a couple of dinosaur tussles.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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The first non-insect animal to evolve powered flight wasn't the bird, but a fuzzy reptile called the pterosaur. These animals ruled Mesozoic skies for 150 million years, soaring above the dinosaurs. Now, they're coming to New York.

The American Museum of Natural History is launching its Pterosaurs: Flight In The Age Of Dinosaurs exhibit on April 5. We got a preview of the exhibit before it opens and here's what we learned about these strange animals.

Pterosaurs are a group of flying reptiles made up of at least 150 species. They varied immensely in size and appearance, as shown in the GIF below. Pterosaurs were anywhere from the size of a bird to the size of a small plane. Some were even as pink as a flamingo.

They went mysteriously extinct with the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, but their closest living relative, the crocodile, still remains.

When the first pterosaurs appeared 220 million years ago, they were seagull-sized. In the GIF below, you can see they had long tails, small heads, and short limbs. As time went on, larger species started appearing. The later pterosaurs had longer heads and necks, shorter tails, and longer limbs from standing on the ground. You can see these in the GIF below.

Some pterosaurs even developed elaborate head crests, like Thalassodromeus sethi, seen below. This pterosaur had the largest head crest of any known vertebrate and a 14 foot wingspan. Sethi lived in modern day Brazil.The skull of Nyctosaurus, seen below, had two giant prongs jutting from its head. These prongs were nearly as long as its entire body and were three times as long as its head.

Scientists debate whether the two bones were connected by a soft tissue or remained bare like antlers.One Pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus northropi, is the largest known flying animal. This species, shown in the GIF below, lived in current day western Texas. Northropi had an over 30-foot wingspan and was named after the Mexican god of air, Quetzalcoatl.

The Pterosaur exhibit displays a lifesize version of northropi hanging in the "Flight Lab" section of the exhibit.

In order to coax their big bodies into flight, these creatures evolved adaptations like hollow bones and an elongated fourth finger to support a wing. Some developed rudder-like tail fins. Flying likely allowed the creature to increase its range for food and mate selection.

The museum also features a "Fly Like A Pterosaur Exhibit" which uses motion sensors to let visitors control a pterosaur avatar.When pterosaurs weren't airborn, they walked on the ground on all fours, like the little guy below. Fossilized tracks, on exhibit in the museum, helped paleontologists reconstruct how these creatures walked. Check out the American Museum of Natural History's Pterosaur: Flight In The Age Of Dinosaurs exhibit opening April 5

*All visuals and information courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History.

SEE ALSO: Weird 'Chicken From Hell' Dinosaur Lived Alongside The T. Rex

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About a 107 million years ago a dinosaur from the family of the Tyrannosaurus Rex stalked or followed a long-necked herbivorous giant along what is now known as the Paluxy Riverbed, near Glen Rose, Texas.

At least, that's what the fossil footprints seem to show. But despite this being one of the most famous dinosaur tracksites in the world, it was at risk of being lost to scholars, and part of it was already gone — until now.

Using old photos and computer software, a group of researchers successfully created a 3-D digital model of the footprints, published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

Almost lost

In 1939 Roland T. Bird, who collected fossils for Barnum Brown of the American Museum of Natural History, wrote about a new and exciting discovery in the Paluxy Riverbed. He found the first unambiguous tracks of a sauropod in the area, which he named Brontopodus after the then-most famous of the sauropods, the non-existent Brontosaurus.

Along this section of the river, it seemed the sauropod was followed by a theropod, which was probably an Acrocathosaurus, a predator related to and similar in size and shape to the Tyrannasaurus. Though it's hard to say what happened there millions of years ago, theories range from one dinosaur following or stalking the other to an actual dinosaur attack.

Whatever it was, museums wanted a part.

Bird returned in 1940 to excavate the site. During the excavation he took photos and hand-drew maps. Then, this particular portion of the riverbed was cut out and split into three parts.

One portion was sent to the American Museum of Natural History, one part to the Texas Memorial Museum, and the third section was lost or destroyed. And in 1988, the section in Texas began to deteriorate.

Reconstructing the tracks

A group of researchers decided to try and digitally reconstruct the three parts together, using a technique called photogrammetry to stitch the information from the photos together, showing what the site looked like before it was taken out of the riverbed.

Only 12 of Bird's 17 photos could be matched and used for the reconstruction, and researchers didn't have much information about those pictures, which would help see how they connected. What they did have was combined with laser scans of the blocks in Texas and New York, and then compared to the old hand-drawn maps.

"I’m totally blown away that it worked, given that photogrammetry works best if you know focal lengths, lens used, and sensor size, and obviously we had none of that," study researcher Peter Falkingham, of the University of London and Brown University, told Business Insider in an email.

According to Falkingham, this success is extremely promising. Not only will it help inform upcoming research on tracks, but it could be used to restore other old sites and artifacts.

Here's the model they ended up with, which shows the Acrocathosaurus and Sauropod tracks left in the muddy riverbed while the predator stalked its prey:

Video Courtesy Peter Falkingham

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Like most of us, the Smithsonian has always wanted a T.Rex to call its own. Now it's finally getting one, and the museum is not taking any chances when it comes to protection.

Forget FedEx Express, this dinosaur is riding "FedEx Custom Critical" from Montana — where it was found and has been housed at the Museum of the Rockies — to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Custom Critical includes around-the-clock tracking, temperature and pressure monitoring, constant surveillance from a remote security command center, and sensors that allow FedEx to see if the packages are being opened or exposed to light.

The truck transporting the giant skeleton will also be followed by a "chase vehicle." We asked if we could track the Dino in real-time, but FedEx spokeswoman Liidia Liuksila told us that the truck's exact location was being kept confidential for security reasons. I wonder how much a T.Rex gets you on the black market.

The monitoring may seem excessive, but the Smithsonian has been hankering for a T.Rex since at least the late 1990s. Back in 1997, the museum had backers ready to offer up a total of $2.5 million to get a T.Rex skeleton named Sue, according to The Washington Post. It wasn't enough. Instead, Sue ended up in the hands of The Field Museum Of Natural History in Chicago.

"After the sale of Sue, dinosaur bones were hot," Randall Kremer, a Smithsonian representative who was at the 1997 auction, told The Washington Post.

Now the Smithsonian is just days away from getting their hands on "Big Mike"— as the T. Rex is called in Montana. The skeleton is on loan to the Smithsonian for the next 50 years.

The dinosaur is currently in its second day of a three-day packaging process into 16 crates, said Liuksila, after which point, it will be on its way east. He will arrive in D.C. on April 15.

The first piece of Big Mike's seven-ton, 38-foot-long skeleton was found by a Montana rancher named Kathy Wankle. She found Big Mike's arm bone — the first T. Rex. arm bone ever found — in 1988. Eventually, about 80% of Big Mike's skeleton was found, making him one of the most complete T. Rex specimens yet.

Big Mike is not the only strange cargo to end up in FedEx's care. In the past decade, they have transported parts of the Titanic, 15,000 sea turtle eggs, rescue capsules used in the 2011 Chilean mine rescue, and two pandas, among other things.

SEE ALSO: These Goofy-Looking Reptiles Ruled The Skies For Millions Of Years

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A Chinese fossil is the earliest and most primitive pterodactyloid, part of a group of flying reptiles that ruled the skies some 163 million years ago, scientists report.

Winged creatures called pterosaurs evolved from a primitive form that lived about 228 million years ago into the largest flying creatures that ever existed. The new specimen helps fill in an important gap in that evolution, researchers say.

"This guy is the very first pterodactyloid — he has the last features that changed before the group radiated and took over the world," said paleontologist Brian Andres of the University of South Florida, a co-author of the study detailed today (April 24) in the journal Current Biology. [Photos of Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs]

(Researchers avoid calling pterodactyloids "pterodactyls," because the term is sometimes used to mean all pterosaurs and sometimes to mean just pterodactyloids, which include members of one of two suborders of pterosaurs.)

The finding extends the fossil record of pterodactyloids by at least 5 million years, to the Middle-Upper Jurassic boundary 163million years ago, Andres told Live Science.

Pterodactyloids are not ancestors of modern birds, which evolved from feathered dinosaurs.

Hidden dragon

Scientists named the new species Kryptodrakon progenitor, meaning "ancestral hidden serpent," because it was found in the area where the movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was filmed.

But this creature was no fearsome dragon. "He is a small guy, and [the fossil is] very fragmentary," Andres said.

The researchers analyzed the fossil fragments and found that Kryptodrakon had a wingspan of about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters), a far cry from the creature's enormous descendants, whose wingspans stretched up to 30 feet (9 m) — as large as a small airplane.

The researchers knew the creature was a pterodactyloid because of a signature bone in its palm used for walking and flying. In early pterosaurs, the bone is very short, attaches to the pinkie and doesn't vary much among individuals. But the corresponding bone in pterodactyloids is much longer, attaches to the ring finger and varies significantly.

Finger bones helped determine wing shape, and the change in this bone may have made pterodactyloids' wings better adapted to their environment, leading to their dominance of the skies, Andres said.

The team didn't find any skull pieces or teeth, so the researchers can't determine the creature's diet. However, relatives of Kryptodrakon have been known to eat insects, fish and even top predators, suggesting the animal was probably a carnivore.

Land fliers

Andres' colleagues discovered the fossil in a mudstone of the Shishugou Formation in northwest China on an expedition in 2001. The harsh, dry environment there is "as far as you can get from the ocean anywhere in the world," Andres said.

In general, paleontologists know a fossilized animal didn't necessarily live in the same environment where it was preserved. However, Andres and his team performed a sophisticated analysis of the fossil fragments that suggests Kryptodrakon did indeed live in a terrestrial environment.

By contrast, early pterosaurs are thought to have lived mostly in marine environments, though the animals returned to land a few times over the course of their evolution, the researchers said.

Andres said he wishes his team had found more fragments of Kryptodrakon. "We got there one year too late. Every year, more and more fossils erode out of the rock," he said.

Original article on Live Science.

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Ancient giant crocodilians killed dinosaur prey by spinning their bodies in "death rolls," tearing off the beasts' flesh and limbs, researchers say.

These new findings shed light on the way ancient reptiles interacted with their environments, scientists added.

Crocodilians include the largest of all reptiles alive today, the saltwater crocodile, a deadly carnivore that can grow at least 23 feet (7 meters) long and weigh more than 2,200 lbs. (1,000 kilograms). These predators will eat just about anything they can, including sharks. (Although these reptiles do kill people, far more people die of bee stings each year than crocodile attacks.)

As massive as saltwater crocodiles are, their ancient relatives could get even larger.Sarcosuchus from Africa and South America could reach about 37.7 feet (11.5 m) long and weigh a whopping 17,635 lbs. (8,000 kg); Deinosuchus from North America could reach a length of 39.3 feet (12 m) and weigh more than 18,740 lbs. (8,500 kg); and Purussaurusfrom the Amazon basin could reach more than 42.6 feet (13 m) long and at least 22,000 lbs. (10,000 kg). [Crocs & Dinos: See Images of 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts]

Bite marks found on fossils suggest that Deinosuchus preyed on dinosaurs such as hadrosaurs, which were large duck-billed dinosaurs, and medium-size bipedal dinosaurs known as theropods, a group that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and the ancestors of birds. Scientists have suggested that Sarcosuchus might also have fed on large dinosaurs, whilePurussaurus hunted large mammals such as giant rodents, as well as turtles and fish.

Researchers suggested that like modern crocodilians, these ancient reptiles might have used death rolls to finish off their prey. This lethal move involves reptiles holding their prey tight with their mighty jaws and spinning their entire bodies to rip off flesh or tear off limbs.

However, the death roll can generate substantial forces in the skull. To see if ancient crocs had skulls that were strong enough to withstand these stresses, investigators modeled the skulls of 16 living crocodilian species and three extinct crocodilian groups.

The researchers suggest that Deinosuchus and Purussaurus could execute death rolls on, respectively, dinosaurs and large mammals. However, narrow-snouted Sarcosuchus probably could not, as the forces to its skull may have been too great.

The scientists found that death rolls were easier for smaller predators, because they were lighter, making it easier for them to spin. This means it was probably easier for juveniles than adults, said lead study author Ernesto Blanco, a paleobiomechanicist at the Institute of Physics in Montevideo, Uruguay.

"It is possible that very large specimens use other approaches for taking chunks of meat from large vertebrates," Blanco said -- for example, with sideways movements of the head. They may have also simply swallowed small prey whole.

The researchers did note their model had several uncertainties, as "we are studying much larger crocs than any living species," Blanco told Live Science. This means "we cannot completely exclude 'death roll' in Sarcosuchus."

The scientists detailed their findings online April 16 in the journal Historical Biology.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This guy could really throw his weight around.

Scientists on Tuesday unveiled body weight estimates for an astounding 426 different dinosaur species using a formula based on the thickness of their leg bones, crowning the truly immense long-necked Argentinosaurus as the biggest of them all.

That plant-eating dinosaur weighed a earth-shaking 90 tons when it lived about 90 million years ago in Argentina. It is the largest known land creature in the planet's history.

"Argentinosaurus, that's the champion," Oxford University paleontologist Roger Benson, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. "It's colossal."

In their dinosaur "weigh-in', the scientists included birds, which arose roughly 150 million years ago within a group of feathered dinosaurs called maniraptorans. A sparrow-sized bird called Qiliania that lived about 120 million years ago in China earned the distinction of being the smallest dinosaur, weighing a mere 15 grams.

Benson noted that Argentinosaurus was about 6 million times the weight of Qiliania, and that both still fit within the dinosaur family. "That seems amazing to me," added Benson, whose study was published in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

The largest meat-eating dinosaur was Tyrannosaurus rex, which weighed 7 tons and is also the largest known land predator of all time. The T. rex edged out another super predator that some scientists had once figured was bigger based on the length of its skull, Giganotosaurus, which lived alongside Argentinosaurus in ancient South America.

The study estimated Giganotosaurus at about 6 tons, pretty darned big, but just a bit shy of dethroning T. rex.

Dinosaurs had a remarkable run on Earth. They first appeared about 228 million years ago during the Triassic period, achieved stunning dimensions during the ensuing Jurassic Period and then disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous Period about 65 million years ago. All but the birds, that is.

The mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, caused by an asteroid that hit Mexico, doomed most creatures but some birds survived. Benson said this study underscores the reasons that birds made it while their bigger dinosaur brethren did not.

Other groups of dinosaurs such as long-necked sauropods like Argentinosaurus, the tank-like ankylosaurs, the duck-billed hadrosaurs, the spike-tailed stegosaurs and the meat-eating tyrannosaurs were essentially locked into a certain ecological niche. But birds filled all kinds of ecological niches with their widely diverse body sizes and "occupations".

Flying birds lived in all kinds of different habitats, both inland and coastal, and came in a wide range of sizes. But there also were large, ostrich-like flightless birds like Gargantuavis and flightless diving birds like Hesperornis.

"It might be that they were simply much more ecologically diverse and that could have helped them survive an extinction," said Benson, who also noted that smaller creatures did a better job surviving the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous.

Paleontologist David Evans of Canada's Royal Ontario Museum said dinosaur body size evolved relatively quickly early on in their time on Earth as they invaded new ecological niches, but then slowed down among most lineages. The exception was the maniraptoran lineage that led to birds, Evans added.

More than 1,000 species of dinosaurs have been identified but many are known from only fragmentary fossil remains.

This study estimated the weight of every dinosaur whose remains are complete enough to contain the bones needed for the study's formula, which is based on the relationship between the robustness of the limbs and the weight of the animal, the researchers said.

(Reporting by Will Dunham; editing by Peter Galloway)

SEE ALSO: These Goofy-Looking Reptiles Ruled The Skies For Millions Of Years

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In the immensely popular (despite the sins) movie Jurassic Park, there's the famous scene where the giant T-Rex is attacking a jeep during a thunder storm. As it attacks, Dr. Alan Grant, a self-respecting paleontologist, yells, "Don't move! He can't see you, if you don't move."

Here's the thing – that's wrong. (If that comes as a blow, you're definitely not going to want to learn the shocking truth about Velociraptors.) The Tyrannous Rex not only could see just fine, whether the object was moving or non-moving (which helps one not run into things), there's also quite a bit of evidence that the T-Rex's sight was extremely good, very possibly better than modern-day hawks and eagles.

This non-moving "fact" from the hit 1993 movie inspired a good deal of research into the subject. Professor Kent Stevens at the University of Oregon began the project DinoMorph in 1993. His goal was to develop "a means to create scientifically useful yet simplified digital models of dinosaur skeletons." Using digital technology, he wanted to recreate tangible visualizations of extinct animals, including the T-Rex.

After speaking at a conference in Toronto in June 1993 (the movie was released in the US on June 11, 1993), he paid a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum where he met with North America's leading paleoartist, Garfield Minott. He was working on a life-size "reconstruction" of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and provided Stevens with life-like head sculptures of seven different theropods (bipedal and primarily carnivorous dinosaurs), including a T-Rex and Velociraptor.

Using these models, a laser pointer, a glass plate, and taxidermic glass eyeballs, Stevens performed experiments to determine the visual field, depth perception, and binocular range (the area that can be viewed at the same time by both eyes) of these dinosaurs.

He published the results in 2006. Performing a test called "inverse perimetry," Stevens evaluated how well a T-Rex would be able to see objects at various elevations and shapes. The wider an animal's binocular range is, "the better its depth perception and capacity to distinguish objects–even those that are motionless or camouflaged."

Stevens determined that a T-Rex's binocular range was 55 degrees, which is wider than even hawks. Stevens continued the research with other theropod dinosaurs and determined that most theropods had binocular ranges at least similar to modern raptorial birds (aka "birds of prey").

Another recent discovery also confirmed that vision was an important sense for the T-Rex, as scientists determined that the T-Rex's snout over time gradually grew longer, narrower, cheek bones dipped more inward, and their eyeballs grew bigger.

While structurally the T-Rex's head and eyes seem primed for great vision, the question remained- how good were their eyes really?

For that, Stevens took the known optics of distant relatives of the T-Rex, including the eagle, chicken, and crocodile, and plugged them into the larger T-Rex eyeball. He was trying to determine visual acuity (clearness of vision) and the greatest distance an object can be seen that still remained distinct.

According to his findings, while admitting that these were best-case scenario determinations, the T-Rex may well have had visual clarity up to 13 times better than a modern human. For reference, an eagle has about 3.6 times the visual clarity of a person. Additionally, it was determined that a T-Rex's vision allowed an object to remain relatively clear up to six kilometers away. For humans, it's only about 1.6 kilometers for the same clarity.

As Stevens put it, "With the size of its eyeballs, (the T-Rex) couldn't help but have excellent vision."

Of course, in the movie (and to a greater and more detailed extent in the book), it is stated that in order to bring these dinosaurs back to life, the scientists needed more DNA to fill the "gaps". In the book, they decided to splice dino DNA with bird, lizard, and frog DNA. In the movie, they only use frog DNA to hammer home the plot device that certain species of frogs can change gender when there is significantly less of one gender in the wild.

So given this, it may be that the dinosaurs in the movie are more frog than actual historic dinosaurs. So, if that's the case, while a bit of a stretch, the question that can be asked is, "Was the statement made by Dr. Grant in the movie actually more about a frog's vision than a T-Rex's?" Digging a tad deeper, this quote from the movie by Dr. Grant gives us a clue to what species of frog they may have used:

They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog's. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment.

The most common West African frog that has a tendency to change gender is the African reed frog. These frogs see quite on par with other species of frogs with their horizontal pupils, though they cannot see in the red spectrum. Yes, it is documented that frogs have a hard time seeing prey that doesn't move, but not significantly so, such that they'd be blind to them.

Plus, humans (and really, all other prey) do move even when they think they are standing still- breathing, trembling, involuntary jerks, this is all movement. Additionally, as Kent Stevens said in response to this moving myth question, "If you're sweating in fear one inch from the nostrils of the T. Rex, it would figure out you were there anyway."

Besides great vision, the T-Rex also had a great sense of smell (and had good hearing). In fact, their large olfactory bulbs and nerves relative to their brain size indicates they may have had a sense of smell about equivalent to modern vultures, which are able to smell dead things from as far away as a couple kilometers. So whether scavenging or hunting, the T-Rex was good at finding things to eat. That said, there is some debate as to just how fast they were, with most scientists today thinking they had only a max speed of about 17-25 mph.

That would have made the jeep chasing scene quite a bit less dramatic.

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Bonus Facts:

• The T-Rex's arms may have looked small (1 meter or so long) in comparison to their massive body size, but each arm of an adult T-Rex is estimated to have been able to lift over four hundred pounds based on large areas for muscle attachment on the bones.
• The T-Rex's closest living relative is thought to be chickens, which incidentally were originally domesticated not for food, but for cockfighting.

SEE ALSO: New Study Drives A Nail In The 'Jurassic Park' Coffin — Amber-Preserved Insects Don't Have DNA

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