One reason is that the T. rex head is already so large and heavy that adding the weight of a large slab of meat between its teeth would make it unable to tip back and stand up, Hartman said. Holding meat with the arms, which are lower, avoids that overloaded teeter-totter effect. Another possibility is that the hands were parenting tools. They would have made it possible for a T. rex to carry yummy slabs of dino flesh to its carnivorous babies, Hartman said. That said, the new finger bone is not going to cause much change to reconstructions of T. rex, says Hartman. Throughout the evolution of meat-eating dinosaurs there was a trend towards fewer fingers, with the earliest having five fingers and the T. rex having two. This newfound nubbin of a third finger was already on its way out, and did not stick out much, he said. "In another 10 million years they would have lost (the third finger) completely," said Hartman. Unfortunately for them, however, the age of dinosaurs ended before that could happen. Related Links: |
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