This is what happens when you’re eaten by a dinosaur
The Indominus Rex of "Jurassic World." Photo: Universal Pictures
Should you venture out to the cinema this weekend to see “Jurassic World,” you’ll no doubt be left with a few troubling questions.
For starters, why does Bryce Dallas Howard insist on wearing high heels in the jungle?
On a more morbid tip, as you watch all the non-above-the-title names get devoured by the rampaging creatures, you have to wonder what it would be like to be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex. Would it be like getting chomped on by a shark? A lion?
For answers,we turned to Thomas R. Holtz, Jr., senior lecturer of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Maryland, an expert on the T. rex — and someone who was kind enough to let a lifetime of scholarship be reduced to this question.
“A Tyrannosaurus bite wouldn’t be like a shark bite,” he says.
Here’s what would happen should you find yourself being pursued by a T. rex. The massive dinosaur would chase you, and chances are, it would catch up to you.
“A young T. rex would be able to outrun any human today,” Holtz says. “For their size, they have long and slender legs, and they have shock-absorbing feet that only show up in the fastest dinosaurs. When you get up to a full-size T. rex, some calculations have said that someone like Usain Bolt could outrun them.”
That doesn’t leave much hope for you and me. Assume you’re caught.
And because the dinosaur has stubby, nearly useless arms, it won’t be trying to grab you with its appendages. It’ll be grabbing you with its mouth.
The monster will swoop down from above (it’s about 15 feet tall) and clamp down on you with a powerful jaw that can exert about three times the force of any living animal.
And then there is the matter of its teeth.
“Shark teeth are like steak knives,” Holtz says. “T. rex didn’t have teeth like that. Their teeth were thick from side to side. It’s like having power behind railroad ties.”
A shark or another carnivore would slice into your flesh, while a T. rex would pretty much pulverize you.
“You’d be pierced and crushed from both sides as these jaws clamp down,” Holtz says. “They would smash all the way through the bones and crush them. You’d be dying from massive shock pretty quickly.”
Your ordeal still wouldn’t be over, however. An adult human would be too big for the dinosaur to swallow whole, so chances are reasonable that you might be ripped into two more-manageable morsels.
“In [1997’s] ‘The Lost World,’ they showed feeding, and it was fairly accurate,” Holtz says. “The two T. rexes tear the person apart, and you see one of them toss the body in the air and swallow it.”
You might also be chewed on your way down. Fossilized T. rex poop shows that bones of its prey have been pulverized, meaning that probably happened before the meat hit the stomach.
All in all, not the best way to go. Although it probably beats death-by-elephant-selfie.
No comments:
Post a Comment