Dinosaur update: A T-Rex's bite would cause your bones to 'explode'
Which sounds both amazing and incredibly painful
I can imagine that being bitten by a T-Rex would be an altogether unpleasant experience – just a hunch. I mean, look at poor old Donald Gennaro:
He had a right hard time of it. But what we didn’t realise, is that during his ordeal, his bones were exploding. His bones. Were. EXPLODING. I mean, I wouldn’t be keen on getting merked by a T-rex with my previous knowledge of their jaws, but add to the whole thing the fact that MY BONES WOULD EXPLODE, and I’d want it even less. Let me just get eaten by a normal dinosaur like a velociraptor or something – one that doesn’t make my bones explode.
How do I know that your bones would explode if a T-rex ate you – well, because some experts told me. Scientists at Florida State University and Oklahoma State University carried out some research to work out how powerful the T-rex’s bite was, which I think is a very important thing to invest time and money in. What they did was to first look at the creature with the strongest bite in the world – the crocodile (coming in first ahead of the American alligator, the hippo and that bloke I saw in Fabric last weekend).
They looked at the muscle arrangement in crocodiles and compared the data with birds, both of which are basically modern-day dinosaurs. Through this they then generated a model for the Tyrannosaurus rex.
Basically, it turns out that a T-rex bite carried 8,000 pounds of force – more than twice that of a crocodile. Looking closer, the teeth were able to create a ridiculous 431,000 pounds of pressure per square inch of bone. That’s why your bones are exploding. That’s why your actual bones are actually exploding.
The T-rex used a special, mammal-like repetitive biting technique, which is unusual in reptiles. Paul Gignac, assistant professor of Anatomy and Vertebrate Paleontology at Oklahoma State University says:
“It was this bone-crunching acumen that helped Tyrannosaurus rex to more fully exploit the carcasses of large horned dinosaurs and duck-billed hadrosaurids whose bones, rich in mineral salts and marrow, were unavailable to smaller, less equipped carnivorous dinosaurs.”
Sounds shit, basically, if you get bit by a T-Rex. I’m out, 0/10, would not get bitten again, ctrl-alt-delete.
What is funny though, is that even with all that power in their jaws; their punches only generate one pound of pressure because their arms are laughable pieces of Peperami that couldn’t even whisper boo to a fucking goose.
(Images: Florida State University/Oklahoma State University)
