Posted on 04/15/2021 3:46:54 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A total of 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex probably existed during the lifespan of the species, researchers have calculated – suggesting that very few survived as fossils.
Charles Marshall at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues used body mass and population density to estimate how many T. rex once lived.
Larger animals tend to have a larger individual range, because they need more food to support their body mass than smaller animals, meaning body mass is inversely correlated with population density – a rule known as Damuth’s law.
Previous analysis of T. rex fossils shows that the average body mass of an adult was about 5200 kilograms. The team also used climate models and the locations of T. rex remains to estimate that the total geographic range of the species was about 2.3 million square kilometres across North America.
Using these figures and data from living species, the team estimated that there was around one T. rex for every 100 square kilometres in North America. “This would mean there was about 20,000 adult T. rex at any given time,” says Marshall.
Previous research shows T. rex lived into its late 20s and, using this figure, the team estimates that 2.5 billion T. rex spanning 127,000 generations graced our planet between 69 and 66 million years ago, the lifespan of the species.
Estimates of population size for long-extinct animals are rare because there are so few fossils. This estimate for adult T. rex suggests a very low fossil incidence rate – it would mean only one in 80 million T. rex survived as fossilised remains.
“This question has been in my head for years,” says Marshall. “I would ask the question every time I held a fossil in my hand.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
At least a third of them are still voting. Democrat, of course.
Boy, that was a whole lot of dinosaur sex going on.
They raised a T-Rex army to save the dinosaurs from extinction but the only thing they had to defend all was small arms.
Imagine the amount of methane they exhausted.
Climate Change I?
And the brontosauri were even more prolific, as they were even bigger.
Enjoy the veal. I’m here all week.
later
COVID-19 killed off every single one of them. Very sad.
It’s an uneducated guesstimate. They have no true, accurate clue.
Pretty much the “angels on the head of a pin” question reframed.
My response would be - so?
Maybe if they’d all worn masks, social distanced, and gotten the vaccine, they’d still be alive today.
How can you social distance when your arms are only six inches long and your head is six feet long????
Read years ago that CO2 was very high back then and plants grew huge.
More to munch on.
Not understanding why a huge number of a carnivorous dinosaur species results in not finding many fossils of it. That might hold true of all the other dinosaur species that were consumed by it though, but that's just my way of thinking.
Who pays these dinosaur researchers and why? How does mankind currently benefit from knowing about long-dead dinosaurs? Just curious.
This is what we call a “SWAG”. Scientific Wild Ass Guess.
Fauci told them to wear their masks and they didn’t do it. Yes he was around then. 😁
lolz. Did you just make that?
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