Headlines about Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists, and “what we thought we knew” being wrong started showing up in my news feed last week.
It’s been a while since I talked about dinosaurs, and I found Nicholas R. Longrich and Evan T. Saitta’s research paper: a pre-publication copy, at any rate.
So this week I thought I’d talk about T. rex, Nanotyrannus, and what they’d learned.
That’s what I thought.
Here’s what I wound up with, after diving down delightfully diverse rabbit holes:
- Tyrannosaurus, Nanotyrannus: New Study, Old Debate
- T. Rex, Tyrant King Lizard: Science, Cinema, and King Kong
- T. Hawkins, H. P. Lovecraft: and a Little Science
- Odds, Ends, and Probably-Baseless Speculation
- Invitations “…to Even Greater Admiration….”
Tyrannosaurus, Nanotyrannus: New Study, Old Debate
Headlines like these started showing up in my news feed last week:1
- “What we thought we knew about T. rex was wrong, researchers say in new study”
New York Post (January 7, 2024)- “Research Resurrects Dinosaur Debate Over ‘Baby T. rex’ That Roamed Wyoming”
Cowboy State Daily (January 7, 2024)- “Nanotyrannus vs. T. rex saga continues: Controversial study ‘doesn’t settle the question at all'”
Live Science (January 3, 2024)- “‘Teenage T. Rex’ skulls belong to different dinosaur, scientists say after decades of debate”
Sky News (January 3, 2024)- “What’s in a Name? The Battle of Baby T. Rex and Nanotyrannus.”
The New York Times (January 2, 2024)
I think the Live Science headline’s quote is right. The Gorgosaurus lancensis — Nanotyrannus — teen T-rex question is not over.
“…But other experts aren’t backing the idea that the fossils belong to Nanotyrannus. ‘The article doesn’t settle the question at all,’ Thomas Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist and an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin, told Live Science in an email. ‘The authors don’t seem to have a solid grasp on growth variation in tyrannosaurs.’…”
“Nanotyrannus vs. T. rex saga continues: Controversial study ‘doesn’t settle the question at all’“, Sascha Pare, Live Science (January 3, 2024)
[emphasis mine]
I’m no expert in dinosaur physiology, so I won’t insist that Nicholas R. Longrich (University of Bath) and Evan Thomas Saitta (University of Chicago) must be right. Or that they must be wrong, because their analysis doesn’t agree with another expert’s.
But I do think that we have a great deal left to learn about dinosaurs in general, and fossils of a sports-model tyrannosaurid — juvenile T. rex — or something else — in particular. And that’s what I’m talking about this week.
T. Rex, Tyrant King Lizard: Science, Cinema, and King Kong
I remember when dinosaurs were supposed to be slow-moving, cold-blooded, and none too bright. That last was mostly implied by saying that stegosaurus had an almost ridiculously small brain. Which it did, and I’m drifting off-topic.
Textbook illustrations of dinosaur superstars like Tyrannosaurus rex still looked like C. R. Knight’s 1919 painting.
I gather that the head’s the wrong shape: too short, maybe, although the ‘this is wrong’ text didn’t get specific.
More to the point, C. R. Knight gave T. rex an extra finger.
But we didn’t find a complete T. rex forelimb until 1989, so that detail doesn’t bother me all that much.
Particularly since the first (1915) public display of T. rex (American Museum of Natural History, under the direction of Henry Fairfield Osborn) showed the critter with three fingers.
Why Henry Fairfield Osborn — he’d described T. rex in 1905 — decided to equip his dino-display with overly-long three-fingered forelimbs, that I don’t know.
I do know that I can hardly blame artists like Charles Robert Knight for accurately rendering what an expert described.
By the time I was out of high school, folks like Robert T. Bakker had been publishing convincing arguments for dinosaurs being warm-blooded. Some of them, at any rate.
I gather that where various dinosaur metabolisms rank on a ‘lizard-to-bird’ scale is still a hot-button topic in some circles.
One more item before moving on.
H. F. Osborn named his dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. The name’s based on Greek and Latin: tyrannos (tyrant) and sauros (lizard), plus rex (king). So the critter’s monker, translated, is “King Tyrant Lizard”.2 Which, more than a century later, is still a pretty cool name.
Trix the Tyrannosaur Takes a Walk
Since dinosaurs — other than the ones we call birds, and that’s another topic — haven’t been around for something like 66,000,000 years, studying them in their natural habitat isn’t an option.
But we have been developing pretty good analytic tools that let scientists work out how critters move, and how they can move. Even when all we’ve got are bones and footprints.
That’s what some folks in the Netherlands did.
“New Study Finds T. Rex Walked at a Slow Pace of Three Miles Per Hour“
Elizabeth Gamillo, Smithsonian Magazine (April 23, 2021)“…On the big screen, the Tyrannosaurus rex is often depicted as a predator that could easily catch up to a speeding car with a few swift stomps. That’s probably because paleontologists had suggested that the T. rex clocked a top speed of 30 miles per hour and a walking speed between 4.5 and 6.7 miles per hour, reports Jeff Spry for SYFY Wire….
“…According to the new study published in Royal Society Open Science, the predators walked at just under 3 miles per hour….”
“…Dinosaurs overall had unique tails that are not found in any other animals today and may have played a crucial role in the way they walked….”
“…To calculate how the tail propelled the T. rex, the researchers used an adult T. rex specimen at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden known as ‘Trix.’ They scanned and modeled Trix’s tail bones to find where the ligaments would have been attached….”
This reconstruction used one particular T. rex, and a specific set of footprints. So I figure that what they’ve shown is how this individual could have walked.3
Whether or not that individual could have run, and what that run would have looked like: that may show up in someone else’s research.
I see the Netherlands study as another piece of a puzzle: and I’m quite sure we’ll keep finding others.
‘What is Wrong With This Picture?’
That drawing is the first published restoration of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton — the holotype, CM 9380.
And it’s wrong. That’s what its Wikimedia Commons page says, anyway, and whoever made the entry has a point. Several. Including the T. rex posture.
“Note: This historical image is not a factually accurate dinosaur restoration.
“Reason: Skull shape is wrong, Tyrannosaurus had two fingers (not three as pictured), tail was held level with body in real life.”
(File:Tyrannosaurus skeleton.jpg, Wikimedia Commons)
I’m not sure what makes the skull shape “wrong”. Maybe the problem is that it’s too short, or the holes are in the wrong places. And the wrong shape.
Or maybe Henry Fairfield Osborn — he was the American Museum of Natural History president at the time, and set up the first T. rex display — based his research on an oddly-shaped T. rex skull. That seems unlikely, though.
Osborn’s also the one who defined the T. rex species, in 1905. He was working with the AMNH 973 fossil — it’s been re-designated CM 9380 — which is now in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.4
The human skeleton’s hands strike me as a bit wonky, too; which may not matter so much, since it’s just there for scale.
A Hodgepodge of Oddments
If Osborn’s T. rex had been a caveman, I’d suspect that his ideas about Nordic and Anglo-Saxon superiority over folks like me was a factor in his T. rex being shown with the “wrong” shape head.
But I’ve never run across someone saying that ‘inferior races’ are degenerate dinosaurs. And that’s yet another topic. Topics, actually.
Let’s see, what else?
I’ve mentioned that Osborn gave his T. rex three fingers instead of two, and that we didn’t have a complete T. rex forelimb until 1989. Or 1988. I’ve seen both years given as the ‘found it’ date.
A holotype is the single specimen or illustration used in a species description.
A species description is a formal scientific description of a species: generally a ‘haven’t seen this before’ plant, animal or whatever.
Osborn knew that Gorgosaurus looked a lot like T. rex and had two fingers, but instead he apparently used Allosaurus as as the model for his T. rex arms. Why, I don’t know.
Gorgosaurus, Albertosaurus, and T. rex are all tyrannosaurids; and at the moment they’re seen as different species. Allosaurus is the name of a genus, not a species. Genus is the next step up from species in our taxonomy of critters.
I’ve mentioned taxonomy, and how we’ve been revising Linnaean taxonomy for centuries, but I’ve yet to talk much about the system itself.
I haven’t talked at all about taphonomy. That’s the study of happens as organisms decay and (sometimes) fossilize. It ties in with taxonomy, since bones and other bits don’t always stay the same size and shape.5
Enough about taxonomy, taphonomy, and “The Mystery of the Three-Fingered Dinosaur”.
A Skull, a Caption, and As-Yet-Unsolved Puzzles
That’s almost the entire description for the “Skull of Tyrannosaurus rex. From the US Department of the Interior” photo in Wikimedia Commons. The rest is mainly when it was taken: “1900s”.
“Skull of Tyrannosaurus rex…” looked a bit like the Osborn T. rex skull, so I went looking for its origins.
By Thursday noon, I’d done a middling-fair online search for another copy of that photo and found nothing. Nothing in English, that is. But I did find a caption for the photo on the German-language Wikipedia Tyrannosaurs page.
“Das Typusexemplar von T. rex am Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Dieser Schädel wurde stark ausgebessert, wobei Allosaurus als Vorlage diente.“
“The type specimen of T. rex at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. This skull was heavily repaired using Allosaurus as a model.“
(Caption for ‘skull of Tyrannosaurs rex’ photo on Tyrannosaurus, Deutsche Wikipedia; translation by Google Translate) [emphasis mine]
And that led me to the page’s discussion of “Das Typusexemplar von T. rex/The type specimen, or holotype, of T. rex”.
“…Barnum Brown entdeckte das erste fragmentarische Skelett eines Tyrannosaurus rex im Jahr 1900 im östlichen Wyoming. Ein weiteres Skelett fand Brown im Jahr 1902 in der Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Henry Fairfield Osborn beschrieb beide Skelette im Jahr 1905 in ein und derselben Veröffentlichung. …
“…Insgesamt entdeckte Brown fünf Teilskelette von Tyrannosaurus. Im Jahr 1941 wurde Browns Fund aus 1902, das Holotyp-Exemplar, an das Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) verkauft. Browns vierter und größter Fund, ebenfalls aus der Hell-Creek-Formation, ist im American Museum of Natural History in New York zu besichtigen….”
“…Barnum Brown discovered the first fragmentary skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex in 1900 in eastern Wyoming. Brown found another skeleton in 1902 in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Henry Fairfield Osborn described both skeletons in one and the same in 1905 Publication. …
“…In total, Brown discovered five partial Tyrannosaurus skeletons. In 1941, Brown’s 1902 find, the holotype specimen, was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brown’s fourth and largest find, also from the Hell Creek Formation, can be viewed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York….”
(Tyrannosaurus, Deutsche Wikipedia; translation by Google Translate) [without footnote links] [emphasis mine]
That would make what I’ll call the Carnegie skull specimen, CM 9380, the T. rex holotype: but CM 9380 isn’t mentioned in either the English- or German-language Wikipedia page, and I didn’t spend time trying to confirm my suspicion with a wider search.
Given time, I could probably track down why B. Brown’s AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) 973 specimen was re-designated CM (Carnegie Museum) 9380.
My guess is that the re-designation happened because AMNH 973 ended up at the Carnegie Museum. But I don’t know.
I also don’t know why the comparatively-famous Henry Fairfield Osborn’s name is on the 1905 paper describing T. rex as a new dinosaur species.
The German-language caption for that T. rex skull photo, however, strongly suggests that the 1905 T. rex drawing — and later paleoart based on it — is “wrong” because someone filled in the gaps of specimen AMNH 973 with what was known about Allosaurus.
And that helps explain why today’s Carnegie Museum T. rex doesn’t look like Osborn’s version.6 Maybe they’ve still got the old ‘tyranno-allo-saur’ skull, but they’ve had more than a century to update their exhibits.
Best Supporting Monster?
Tyrannosaurus rex may not have the star quality that made King Kong a perennial title character, but the dynamic dinosaur did dominate the occasional dramatic moment on the silver screen.
T. rex may be among the few dinosaurs — maybe the only one — folks who aren’t scientists or science fans know by it’s binomial “Tyrannosaurs rex” moniker.
How much of that’s thanks to Osborn picking a cool-sounding name has probably been debated, along with the influence of cinematic productions such as “King Kong”.
Speaking of which, the 1933 RKO “King Kong” T. rex has the Osborn three-fingered forelimbs and — judging by a quick look at a YouTube film clip — Osborn’ s tyranno-allo-saur head. Which, in 1933, may still have been the consensus scientific reconstruction.
Review and revision of T. rex didn’t, I gather, pick up until the 1960s, when 42 new T. rex skeletons showed up, one of them 80% complete.
By then, paleontologists had realized that the Osborn semi-upright posture for T. rex was somewhere between cripplingly difficult and downright impossible. Seems that Osborn took his cue from an 1865 Hadrosaur reconstruction.
Anyway, folks kept finding T. rex fossils: including RTMP 81.6.1, “Black Beauty”, the first T. rex fossil given a nickname. That habit caught on, so now we have Sue the dinosaur and Stan the dinosaur, both named after the folks who found them.7
T. Hawkins, H. P. Lovecraft: and a Little Science
“…They, … belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part..”
(“The Call of Cthulhu“, H. P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales (February 1928) via Wikisource)
I was born during the Truman administration, and grew up in a world where folks who weren’t ranting against communism and Catholicism acknowledged that we live in a vast and ancient universe.
So I probably can’t understand the horror and distress which such knowledge held for earlier generations. May have held, that is. For some.
Making matters worse, again for some, by the mid-19th century it was obvious that our world was not only way older than Ussher said it was — that’s a can of worms I’ll consign to a footnote this week — it had been chock-full of monsters!
That brings me to what an English geologist wrote about Lucifer and “Dragon Pterodactyles” and Noah and — I am not making this up:
“…’Adam,’ the Lucifer and Protagonist of Antiquity, doing mis-prision against Sovereignty, turns the weapons of Loyalty upon his Liege, and plunges them into the Bowels of his Mother Earth. Forsaken of Angels, groaning, she bringeth forth grim Monsters, which ravage her Garden, the Locusts that consume it away….
“…Then a Vision of Abysmal Waters, swarming with all wondrous creatures of Life, and gelid Swamps with amphibious things , and Dragon Pterodactyles flitting in the hot air with Vampire Wing….
“…Then a Vision of brute Savages haunting Eldritch Caves: of gaunt Lords of wassail, war, blood, and perdition: Blasted Continents, and withering pines, and briars and thorns: Rebellion, Violence, horrors manifold: Prometheus chained, the Vulture, the Liver: The World at the brink of Death.
“Apollo transfixing Python, The booming Flood, driving, rolling, roaring, wrenching, wrecking, whelming the accursed Titans in endless destruction.
“Righteous Noah saved….”
(“The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri,” Thomas Hawkins, pp. 4, 5 (1840))
I suspect, strongly, that works such as “The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons…” inspired H. P. Lovecraft, but that’s a rabbit hole I’ve avoided so far. On the other hand, the full title of Thomas Hawkins’ tome is too weird to ignore:
“The book of the great sea-dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, [gedolim taninim] gedolim taninim, of Moses. Extinct monsters of the ancient earth. With thirty plates, copied from skeletons in the author’s collection of fossil organic remains, (deposited in the British museum.)”
Thomas Hawkins (1840)
Getting back (finally!) to T. rex, “Tyrant King Lizards” — which weren’t lizards, and that’s yet again another topic — were around for a couple million years, right before about three quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth stopped living. Abruptly.
Odds are very good that the mass extinction happened because something slid out of the sky and blew a hole more than a hundred miles across in what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula. There’s also a pretty good chance that other factors were in play, including lava floods where Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra are now.
When the dust settled, all non-avian dinosaurs were extinct.8
Great Western Seaway: From Hadrosaurs to Prairie Chickens
Studying dinosaurs like T. rex would be easy, or easier at any rate, if researchers could camp along the shore of the Western Interior Seaway, and track the movements and growth of individual critters.
That’s not an option.
Back then, places like the Hell Creek Formation enjoyed a subtropical climate, and were oceanfront property.
That was then, this is now. What was a shallow inland sea is now the Great Plains. Flowering plants survived whatever happened about 66,000,000 years back, but non-avian dinosaurs didn’t.
I’ve noticed that maps of North America during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous epoch — if I get started on how scientists divvy up geologic time I’ll never get this thing finished — show several different versions of the Great Western Seaway.
I figure that’s partly because Earth’s sea level was changing around that time. Maybe the ocean was sinking, or maybe the continents were all rising. Either way, the Great Western Seaway isn’t there any more.9
And neither is T. rex, so all scientist have to work with in their studies are fossils and an increasingly useful array of analytic tools.
“…There is a Great Deal We Do Not Know….”
This is where I was going to talk about the research paper that triggered those headlines.
It’s now Friday afternoon. And, although I found the paper’s published version —
- “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“
Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: November 4, 2023 / Revised: December 18 2023 / Accepted: December 21 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
— I haven’t had time to read it. Skim, yes. Read, no.
So I’ll pick a few points they made that I think make sense, and then see if I can wrap this thing up before Saturday.
Maybe the most important point is at the end of their Discussion > 4.6 Implications section:
“…It is remarkable that the systematics of an animal as famous, as well-known, and as intensively studied as Tyrannosaurus have remained so incompletely understood and controversial. This emphasizes how little we really know about past diversity. If we still do not understand T. rex, what else do we not understand? There is a great deal we do not know, and may never know, about the life of the past.“
(“Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…”, Nicholas R. Longrich et al, Fossil Studies (January 3, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Acknowledging a lack of omniscience impresses me more that saying that others “don’t seem to have a solid grasp on growth variation in tyrannosaurs.”
Now, maybe what these researchers identify as Nanotyrannus lancensis actually is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
Despite not resembling confirmed juvenile T. rex fossils, having an apparent growth pattern that suggests the N. l. specimens were young adults, and having distinctive jaws.
Another point is that the N. l. skulls ‘look grown-up’:
“…Nanotyrannus individuals show skeletal fusion and rugose facial bone, suggesting they were approaching maturity….”
(“Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…”, Nicholas R. Longrich et al, Fossil Studies (January 3, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
“Rugose” is science-speak for “wrinkled”, sort of,10 which may explain why Lovecraft used the word as much as he did:
“…I might call it gigantic—tentacled—proboscidian—octopus-eyed—semi-amorphous—plastic—partly squamous and partly rugose—ugh!…”
(“Out of the Aeons“, Lovecraft)
“…his body was like those of the others—rugose, partly squamous, and curiously articulated in a fashion mainly insect-like….”
(“Through the Gates of the Silver Key” Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price)
“…It was all eyes—wolfish and mocking—and the rugose insect-like head dissolved at the top to a thin stream of mist….”
(“The Shunned House“, Lovecraft)
(via The H. P. Lovecraft Archive)[emphasis mine]
Good grief. There’s a reason why I’m distracted this week, and that’s still another topic.
Wrenching myself back to the the latest turn in the Nanotyrannus matter —
Growth Rates and (No) Overlap, Foxes and Wolves
Another point that impressed me was the assertion that there’s no overlap in size, between juvenile T. rex individuals and big Nanotyrannus individuals.
“…Although it is conceivable that young Tyrannosaurus sometimes showed slow growth rates due to sickness, lack of food, or other stresses, it is unlikely that all three individuals sectioned would exhibit similar growth anomalies; it is more likely that they exhibit typical growth rates for their taxon….
“…3.5. Existence of Juvenile Tyrannosaurus Refutes Identification of Nanotyrannus as Juvenile Tyrannosaurus
“The hypothesis that Nanotyrannus is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus predicts that the two forms should not overlap in size; that is, all Nanotyrannus will be small, and all Tyrannosaurus will be big. No small Tyrannosaurus should exist. Conversely, if Nanotyrannus is a distinct species, then small juveniles of Tyrannosaurus—approaching the size of Nanotyrannus or smaller—must exist. Juvenile dinosaurs tend to be extremely rare; however, potential juveniles of Tyrannosaurus are known, including a partial skull.
“The smallest unambiguous Tyrannosaurus skeleton known is LACM 28345. This specimen exhibits diagnostic features of T. rex, including broad, posteriorly tapering nasals, short nasal processes of the frontals, …
“…The skull of LACM 28345 is an estimated 800 mm long. This is 40% longer than the holotype of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), …
“Although it is conceivable that the differences in morphology seen could rapidly develop as the animals mature at this size, it seems unlikely.…”
“Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“; Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: 4 November 2023 / Revised: December 18, 2023 / Accepted: December 21, 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) [emphasis mine]
If there really is a gap between big Nanotyrannus lancensis fossils and small or juvenile T. rex fossils: I’m willing to think we’re looking at two different species.
Some of the ‘T. rex or not T. rex’ debate started me thinking about what scientists might make of today’s North American critters, if all they had were bones and tracks to study. Seeing foxes as immature wolves might make sense. At least at first.11
Odds, Ends, and Probably-Baseless Speculation
Good news: scientific papers now routinely include a “Funding” section, so readers can consider whether or not where the researchers were getting their money affected their conclusions.
Frustrating news: I tried double-checking something in the “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…” paper, and now I get a “Bad Gateway” notice when I try accessing it.
That happens now and then. And sometimes I’m not allowed re-entry to a site that’s (apparently) reserved for members of a professional group. Or has some other reason for an ‘only us’ policy.
Not news at all: we live in a less-than-ideal world, so each of us can make decisions based on bad motives.
Probably-baseless speculation: A Smithsonian Magazine article mentioned that a T. rex fossil (“Chomper”, but not the toy) is for sale: for $20,000,000. That’s a fair chunk of change. So were the million-dollar amounts mentioned in a Wikipedia page listing of T. rex specimens.
I’d prefer thinking that scientists wouldn’t let finances affect their better judgment.
But if I was in the Paleontology Department of Wassamatta U., and I knew that Billy Bigbucks, the barrel and balance beam big shot, had recently purchased an (alleged) T. rex fossil for more than I’d make in my lifetime —
And that B. B. was Wassamatta U.’s biggest donor —
Well, maybe I’d be somewhat diffident about suggesting that B. B. hadn’t bought a piece of something that co-starred with King Kong.
Then there’s the aura of coolness surrounding Tyrannosaurus rex. Which, in a way, does matter: scientists are human. Just look at what happened when Pluto’s status changed.12
Invitations “…to Even Greater Admiration….”
Finally, the reason I’ve been distracted this week is something that I may discuss.
Later, when I have enough information to make it worthwhile.
I was going to talk about H. F. Osborn’s concerns regarding Anglo-Saxon/Nordic purity, and why that doesn’t make me ignore his contribution to paleontology. But that’s something that would take more time than I have.
Instead, I’ll touch on why I’m okay with learning about God’s universe.
I’m human, so I’m a rational animal. Make that optionally rational. I have free will, so using my brain is a choice, not a hardwired response. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1730, 1778, 1804, 1951, 2339)
Like every other human, I’m made from the stuff of this world.
“then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
(Genesis 2:7)
We’ve known that for a long time. What’s changed during the last few generations is how much we know about the “dust of the ground” we’re made from.
I could let that bother me. But it didn’t before I became a Catholic, and it sure doesn’t now.
As for science and religion, faith and reason, I think faith and reason get along fine. God makes everything, so nothing we learn can threaten an informed faith. (Catechism, 159)
Truth matters, in science and in faith. (Catechism, 31, 159)
None of this is new, and neither are the following excerpts. I’ve used them before:
“…if methodical investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith, for earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God. … we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed.…”
(“Gaudium et Spes,” Pope St. Paul VI (December 7, 1965)) [emphasis mine]“…God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures — and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. … Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth….”
(“Providentissimus Deus,” Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893) [emphasis mine]“Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air…. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we’re beautiful.’…
“…So in this way they arrived at a knowledge of the god who made things, through the things which he made.”
(Sermon 241, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 411))
Basically, I see what we’re learning about this wonder-packed universe as opportunities for “even greater admiration” of God:
“…These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator….”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 283)
Even if — no, make that particularly since — that means thinking about how all this fits in to what we’ve already learned.
And that’s — oh, my — a great many more topics.
Some of which I’ve talked about before:
- “Ancient Stone Tools: Hello, Fellow Humans?“
(February 18, 2023) - “Horses and Humans, Chimps and Muscles“
(December 31, 2022 ) - “A Trilobite With a Hyper-Compound Eye“
(October 16, 2021) - “Evolution: Science, Religion, Opinions and Me“
(August 28, 2021) - “Peril in Orion! Beware Betelgeuse?“
(March 18, 2023)
- “What we thought we knew about T. rex was wrong, researchers say in new study“
Michael Lee , Fox News, via New York Post (January 7, 2024) - “Research Resurrects Dinosaur Debate Over ‘Baby T. rex’ That Roamed Wyoming“
Andrew Rossi, Cowboy State Daily (January 7, 2024) - “Nanotyrannus vs. T. rex saga continues: Controversial study ‘doesn’t settle the question at all’“
Sascha Pare, Live Science (January 3, 2024) - “‘Teenage T. rex’ skulls belong to different dinosaur, scientists say after decades of debate“
Dylan Donnelly, Sky News (January 3, 2024) - “Decades-Long Debate on ‘Teenage’ Tyrannosaur Fossils Takes Another Turn“
(A new paper adds to evidence suggesting a group of disputed fossils, identified by many scientists as young T. rex, are actually another species)
Christian Thorsberg, Smithsonian Magazine (January 3, 2024) - “What’s in a Name? The Battle of Baby T. Rex and Nanotyrannus.“
(A dinosaur fossil listed for sale in London for $20 million embodies one of the most heated debates in paleontology.)
Julia Jacobs, Zachary Small; The New York Times (January 2, 2024) - “New research shows ‘juvenile’ T. rex fossils are a distinct species of small tyrannosaur“
University of Bath, Phys.org (January 2, 2024)
- Wikipedia
- American Museum of Natural History
- Dinosaur
- Dinosaur brains and intelligence
- Edward Lhuyd (found and described, back in 1699, what we recognize as a sauropod tooth (Rutellum))
- Henry Fairfield Osborn
- List of informally named dinosaurs
- Mesotherm
- Physiology of dinosaurs
- Robert T. Bakker
- Stegosaurus
- Tyrannosaurus
- Wikimedia Commons
3 Critters, and how we study them:
- Wikipedia
- “Natural Frequency Method: estimating the preferred walking speed of Tyrannosaurus rex based on tail natural frequency“
Pasha A. van Bijlert, A. J. ‘Knoek’ van Soest, Anne S. Schulp; The Royal Society PeerJ (April 21, 2121) - US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health
- “Investigating the running abilities of Tyrannosaurus rex using stress-constrained multibody dynamic analysis“
William I. Sellers, Stuart B. Pond, Charlotte A. Brassey, Philip L. Manning, Karl T. Bates; (July 18, 2017) - “Dinosaur biomechanics“
R. McNeill Alexander, Proceedings. Biological sciences (August 7, 2006)
- “Investigating the running abilities of Tyrannosaurus rex using stress-constrained multibody dynamic analysis“
4 Presenting Tyrannosaurus rex:
- Wikipedia
- Wikimedia Commons
- Carnegie Museum of Natural History
5 More than you need, or may want, to know about:
- Wikipedia
- Taxonomic and other tangents
- “Ancient Stone Tools: Hello, Fellow Humans?” (February 18, 2023)
- “Horses and Humans, Chimps and Muscles” (December 31, 2022)
- “First Americans?” (May 5, 2017)
- “Earliest Life: Maybe” (March 10, 2017)
6 Taxonomy and Tyrannosaurus trivia:
- Wikipedia
- Wikimedia Commons
- “Tyrannosaurus and other Cretaceous carnivorous dinosaurs“
American Museum of Natural History (1905) - Carnegie Museum of Natural History
7 T. rex, binomial movie star; dinosaurs with nicknames; and a special effects inventor:
- Wikipedia
- “Willis O’Brien, Unsung Pioneer of Animation and Special Effects“
Christian A. Bice, 3130 Advanced Composition, Fall 2019, Best Essays (Kevin E. O’Donnell PhD, Professor of English, Department of Literature and Language, East Tennessee State University) - “Miniature Effect Shots“
Willis O’Brien, The International Photographer (May 1933, pp. 38-39) via Internet Archive - “Willis O’Brien : Oakland’s own animation pioneer“
Emily Foster, Oakland Public Library (March 29, 2022) - tyrannosaurus rex
TMDB (The Movie DataBase) - “King Kong (1933) — Battle with Tyrannosaurus” (1933)
Fix Me A Scene, Youtube (posted ca. 2018)
8 Death from the sky, an old chronology, and two profoundly prolix authors:
- Wikipedia
- Science and religion, coming at truth from different angles:
- “Early Birds, Unisex Fish” (March 9, 2018)
- “Art, Evolution and Aquinas” (March 2, 2018)
- “Values and Ichthyosaurs” (September 22, 2017)
9 Remembering a long-gone seaway:
- Wikipedia
- “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“; Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: 4 November 2023 / Revised: December 18, 2023 / Accepted: December 21, 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
- rugose
Merrian-Webster
11 Foxes, Wolves, and a dinosaurian family I didn’t get around to discussing:
- Wikipedia
- “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“; Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: 4 November 2023 / Revised: December 18, 2023 / Accepted: December 21, 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
12 Odds, ends, and a dwarf planet:
- Wikipedia
- “Decades-Long Debate on ‘Teenage’ Tyrannosaur Fossils Takes Another Turn“
Christian Thorsberg, Smithsonian Magazine (January 3, 2024) - “The Origin of a Little Tyrant“
Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine (November 8, 2011) - “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“; Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: 4 November 2023 / Revised: December 18, 2023 / Accepted: December 21, 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)
This has me looking at a T. rex-based virtual YouTuber I’m a fan of as someone whose lore goes well with his personality some more, considering how he has a reputation for being what folks today call a “boyfailure.” Also, I suppose that info you talked about is why the T. rex was on the social media trends then?
I don’t know about T. rex social media trends. My guess is that some of what I found was easier to find because of such trends. The Tyrant Lizard King has been a major cultural landmark since back when social media was newspaper editorial pages, fan magazines and Saturday afternoon newsreels. 😉