The Rough Life of SUE the T. rex 

Iirc Jack Horner's reasoning was: tyrannosaurus had great sense of smell, binocular vision, and related to birds; vultures have binocular vision (dunno if true or not), have great sense of smell, and are scavengers; ergo, tyrannosaurus are scavengers. That was 30 years ago though, and afaik he does not support the t-rex scavenger only hypothesis anymore.

All predatory animals are scavengers from time to time. When you live in the wild you don't know when your next meal is going to come and you're not going to pass up a big juicy dead animal in hopes that you might kill something later.

Sharks are active predators yes but they are also active scavengers when they can get an easy meal

@@markshort9098 Well sure, but the theory they were proposing was that T-Rex was just a scavenger like a modern vulture. Certainly all active predators scavenge whenever possible, the question was is that all it does. Much like with sharks the answer is probably not.

@@0utc4st1985 I'm no expert but 1 look at a t rex skull from front on screams killer to me, the way the eyes have a good view of where it's going to bite isn't something that benefits a pure scavenger on the ground especially when eyes further to the side of the head would be beneficial to young t rexs to see threats coming if they were just scavengers

The narrow concave snouts of velociraptors and small body size would make for good scavengers.

@@reptomicus they may have been mostly scavengers but took to hunting occasionally, a lot of animals do this. While not active hunters, they most likely were just opportunistic like most scavengers.

I hate how long that stuck in the public it literally has the flimsiest arguments and Jack Horner looks extremely suspicious

The footbone of all adult Tyrannosaurs also indicates that these animals were built for sustained amounts of running; so unless something was predating on these animals, I'd say they were pretty much built to hunt and chase down large prey, such as Edmontosaurs and Triceraptops.

@@ubauba6530 Yeah, there's plenty of documentation about T. Rex vs Triceratops, no "passive-aggressive" there.

Yes, she made this such a great experience.

The recognition of this has caused a major restructuring of the categorization of dinosaurs, especially ceratopsians. Another big new development is the recognition of individual variation within a species, this again specifically impact ceratopsians. To the degree that dozens of animals previously thought to be different species are now recognized as either younger examples or to just represent individual variations of one species. Now it seems like common sense, but at the time it completely shook up alot of research! The Field Museum actually has some nice displays explaining this.

I'm visualizing a 15-year old dino learning to drive, LOL.

This is proving true of ancient dinosaurs across the board. These animals were morphologically different. They changed a great deal through their lives in ways that are quasi unique. Dr. O'Connor's story about how Nanotyrannus turned out to not be a separate species is playing out across the paleontological world. Another great example of this is the former Torosaurus. We thought it was a completely unique animal, but it turns out Triceratops, like many dinosaurs, just radically changes through its life cycle in ways that we don't see a ton of in modern animals. Torosaurus is just an elderly Triceratops.

Or the more obvious answer that the theory that Nanotyrannus being juvenile T-rex is wrong. There are some rather compelling proof in that direction, different number of teeth, arms being longer on NanoT (not just by proportion, but actually twice as long) and that the brains do not have the same shape or connections.

@@znail4675 different number of teeth means absolutely nothing, infant humans don't have the same number of teeth as adults either. In T. rex, the juveniles had a different skull shape, so probably different teeth as well. Also, there's the histological evidence from the specimen Jane proving that she wasn't fully grown.

@@isaacbruner65 Human baby teeth is a good example of why your theory does not work out well in reality. Human baby teeth are not connected to the jaw bones and while the adult teeth are and as they grow they push up the baby teeth causing them to fall out. NanoT would have to break off all their teeth from the bone and then regrow a new set of teeth, without disrupting their ability to hunt or eat. They are also not baby's but ~15 years old and with teeth quite able to take care of themselves, not so much without teeth. Jane being juvenile does not prove anything. It does not contradict the theory, but it is not proof of it being true. Now for your next trick, try and explain how the arms shrink or the brain rearrange itself?

Me too! I usually cant stand watching anything for mote than 30 minutes and i watched it all!

Very insane!

It's an intentional mondegreen

and she was sued for, too

And the meanings behind the name Sue (Susan…) are “Lily Rose” “Lotus Flower” that bloom through muddy water/ground.

And it caused them to sue.

Yes! An awe and terror inspiring FINAL sight.

I just wonder if there are larger predators we have not discovered yet.

@@tmo4330 Who knows

@@concept5631 The T-Rex fossils I saw showed old injuries that were healed up. Broken ribs, leg infections to the bone. Busted out teeth. Those monsters must have had a heck of a time making a living! Or just as bad, having to fight it out for a mate.

@@tmo4330 The Cretaceous sure sounds like a violent place. A place Tyrannosaur dominated.

Could you go to Wrigley Field and tell the Cubs to hurry up and get their shit together already

Wait sue is no longer in Chicago?

@@reaperebk1085 She's been on tour before. She was in Boston one of the last times I went to the Boston Museum of Science. i was so damn excited when i found out she was there and got one photo with the crappy camera on my brick phone lol

LUCKY YOU!!! I’d love access to her when I wanted! I had the good fortune to see her 8 times when she came to visit us at the SB Museum of Natural History! What a treat♥️‼️SHES a gift for sure!🎁♥️‼️🤗

I always wanted to go to the natural history museum in Chicago and check out all the extinct animals and dinosaurs. You sir are lucky to be close to that.

Duh

But her vision is based on movement

Cute rex emoji

I like the idea she was not really hungry after eating a goat and a lawyer and was more curious to what he was. The fact he didn't stimulate its predator prey response by trying to run is another reason why he didn't get eaten.

@@BT-su1yf the t-Rex in Jurassic Park had frog genes so that why she could only see movement. They failed to mention that in the movie but it’s in the book. So a natural t-rex would very much have been able to see even without movement. There’s a video here on RU-vid that talks about it.

.....Funny, I wouldn't have thought too much about the potential parasite infections either...but even modern Humans, in the most clean environments, are teeming with parasites. Seems obvious that these killing machines (that also likely scavenged) would have been chock full of external and internal parasites....giant ticks and foot long intestinal worms....I bet they got some help from Proto-birds similar to today's Oxpicker.

If you watch the documentary it is a real convoluted mess. Basically moral of the story is have you ever find anything really cool in your backyard anybody and everybody up to and including the federal government we use any technicality or loophole to steal it from you.

@@robertstone9988 just appreciate the pun dude…

@@caruzo9631 I got the pun and I laughed. Just throwing in my 2 cents. Could u imagine the text to talk trying to cipher all that.

Clever. Not original, though.

@@robertstone9988 was

literally same tho

Like she had brought up, maybe they were used at a earlier stage when they didnt quite have the bite force. I would think that the muscles would atrophy but since the fossils indicate that the arms were very muscular im not to sure.

I wonder if she was defending a carcass or her babies?

@@memomorph5375 or she could have also been defending her territory food and babies aren't the only things that animal will defend

Same here.

Not fluffy. However, the Yutyrannus was fluffy

Yeah I got to see her in person as a kid in the 2000s and it left a big impression

Wait I am genuinely curious how are we able to tell the difference between a male and female T-Rex is it all in the bone structure or something else I need to know

@@isaacm7934 The only method is to find a specific kind of tissue found in gravid birds. Since this tissue only appears in gravid birds you'd need to find a T. rex that was either about to lay eggs or died shortly after laying eggs. We have found one T. rex with such tissue, B-rex, and she wasn't particularly large for a T. rex.

@@minutemansam1214 oh ok thanks

Interesting hypothesis.... :)

Maybe, but we see those holes in other specimens jaws so a bacterial infection is probably the best answer.

@@jerk5959 could be a bacterial infection or some other aliment. they didn't say that they found clear and undeniable evidence in the form of fossilized bacteria in or around the jaw. i was basing my hypothesis off of my knowledge of the modern reptiles i keep and study. turtles, tortoises, monitor lizards, various snakes. these animals can all develop conditions caused by a lack of calcium in the diet. witch most commonly show in jaw or shell deformations and can be exacerbated by injuries or growth/development. these conditions cause the bones to become spongy both in texture and appearance IE full of little holes of various sizes. mammals will also experience weakened teeth and jaw bones do too improper calcium intake. if a animal needs calcium to heal, develop, or simply maintain itself its gonna find it somewhere. either from its diet or some preexisting source of calcium already inside its body.

One of the t Rex skeletons has, healed, tail hip injuries to the point it would have been next to immobile. It's part of the evidence that they were pack hunters (whether family groups or mixed who knows) and had a social structure that would have enabled crippled individuals to survive. Something to contemplate..a pack of t Rex 😮

I disagree. They can’t even bend their head down to look at their arms, so how well could a T-Rex even aim its arms for cutting tendons? I think they’re more for scratching the back of a mate for mating, to get them in the mood, like Boa and Python claws.

@@jollygoodfellow3957 we can't see our own arse but we clean em.

i was hoping to see a Dresden comment :)

Polka will never die!

Gave it some behavioral surveys to answer before it died again

Damn polka magic

Polka can get anything moving.

Well that was really the only example the researchers had to go by of bipedal animals with long tails. And for sauropods, they seem to have looked at ortriches because they have long necks. They also tended to reconstruct dinosaur legs splaying out like crocodiles instead of under their bodies like elephants.

With the different cycles they would’ve laid eggs in it wouldn’t properly confirm the gender unless it had the calcium reserve. If it didn’t it could still plausibly be female as it’s not confirmed that after the eggs are created or during certain conditions they might not have the calcium for the eggs reserved in bone

She kind of answered the question, based on the gender-based body types, that males were smaller and more gracile, while females tend to be larger and "beefier" and that Sue's build falls in to that category.

I don’t think we have a right to assign a gender to the dinosaurs. Remember gender isn’t assigned at birth. 🙈

@@TheRonaldbaxter right, gender is a social construct I forgot xD

@@BJones-yw4dd there isn’t actually a lot to support this theory. The only known adult female tyrannosaurs is called B-Rex or MOR 1125, but it is nowhere near the size and the bulk of Sue or Scotty. What is more plausible as more the difference un morphology might be due to a slight change in Tyrannosaurs which could depend on a subspecies or a general tendency for these animals to grow larger as lived closer to the kpg mass extinction. Also, the larger and bulkier ones are all in the 30 years old range whereas a specimen like Thomas were more gracile but at 17 years old already reached a length of 10 meters (34ft). This change in morphology being due to aging makes a lot more sense when you consider how gracile and different a young tyrannosaurus looked compared to an adult.

Dr. David Hone talks about that. He has some lectures here on RU-vid.

@@dallacosta2868 I’ve watched his lectures and saw the one on dinosaurs being social, it was fantastic.

Trackways have been a big source of information about dinosaur behavior. If there are trackways containing many prints from similar animals all heading in the same direction, then we can interpret that as a herd. There are even tracks that show animals swimming and one set that appear to show a large theopod scratching in the dirt like a turkey, which is interpreted as the first evidence of dinosaur sexual behavior. There are other evidence for gregarious social behavior such as crowded nesting sites. Even when nests themselves are not present there have been discoveries of large numbers of juveniles all in the same spot which suggests not only a group nesting site, but group rearing of young.

In addition to someone who mentiones trackways and nests, the actual structure of the animal (especially those with things like skin, stomach content, or feathers left behind) can often give huge clues to its lifestyle and ways it lived. Big eye sockets, certain olfactory structures, shape of the bones, bony structures that are too small for fighting but too big to be nothing, etc, as well as using modern animals to speculate on behaviors

Also healed injuries, which the animal on its own wouldn't have survived, for predators packs with food available, herbivores being in herds which indicates mutual protection from predators. A bunch of small clues like a puzzle, which gives a picture. Of course, GIGO applies also

It seesm unlikely that, if they were caused by horns, that all of the stab wounds would be clustered near the back of its jaw.

We do have an idea, actually! The roar concept is nothing more than Hollywood drama to make the dinosaurs (specifically in Jurassic park) seem scarier. In reality, most planentaologists have come to the conclusion that most dinosaur specimen actually made close-mouth vocalizations (like birds). The T-rex for example is thought to sound like a giant ostrich, and could vibrate your entire body with its thrum. Other dinosaurs are thought to quack, chirp, cheep, thrum, and also vibrate via closed-mouth vocalizations

It's also been hypothesized that T. rex used low frequency calls to communicate across long distances, the same way elephants do today. Look up what it could have sounded like, it's terrifying.

For a very long time dinosaur depictions were based on crocodillians. The scientific and art communities considered those animals to be the closest living relatives. So we saw them green and brown with big scales, maybe with stripes. And crocodiles do have a kind of vibrating roar which sounds something like a lawn mower starting up. For the sake of B movie budgets, in older films Trex were usually just given a straight up lion/tiger roar. It is also NOT uncommon for crocodiles to be overdubbed with lion/tiger roars in B movies simply because that is the sound effect they had available! Despite the hate given to Jurassic Park, they did make efforts to give the Trex more correct sounds, using a crocodile, strangely also a baby elephant and koala, but also it is blended with a tiger... because frankly that is what movie goers WANT. It is entertainment first and foremost. For the velociraptors and other smaller dinosaurs, Jurassic Park was absolutely revolutionary and even controversial in giving them more bird-like vocalizations and moddling thier movements on birds like turkeys. The fact that Trex's hearing is best in lower frequencies does at least give some credence to the idea that they had low frequency volcalizations like a roar.

But is it unreasonable to think that they may have had an open mouth vocalization? Not saying like a mammalian roar, but like some birds that make loud open mouth calls.

​@Patreeko Time crocadillians actually have a wide range of vocalizations.. people are just more aware of the males' roar/bellow

They're not real..They are CGI, and or Fake ..ask a Christian..

@@cyborgar15 troll

@@cyborgar15 As a cultist, you mean

​@@DINO_X65 why are you imagining stupiud things? youre the troll

@@mikejones-vd3fg why do you think dinosaurs never existed? you also might be the troll here

"months without food" lol, in what cartoon did that happen?

@@enriquecabrera2137 alligators can literally go YEARS without eating! Crocodiles as well.

@@Lolamy so can humans who restrict their movement and get proper liquids

​@@enriquecabrera2137 There's the issue. Humans can't get proper liquids without moving.😉

To be fair, the high school diploma has been depreciated to the point of irrelevance by decade after decade of playing politics with public education. Universites are now funneling new students through remedial (read: high school) classes the first few semesters as a matter of orthodoxy because they can reliably assume the average high school graduate is functionally illiterate. Good on you for rising to the occasion, but the ugly truth is the institution is probably right to use little kid language. That's the problem with being a culture in decline... The public spaces in museums are science flavored theme parks designed to fund what goes on behind the scenes. You're going to have to dig with your own two hands to get to the real meat of these matters. You're using the institution incorrectly if you expect anything more than rudimentary, showy presentations.

I noticed that but I just tried to ignore it.

Oh, yes. Five times. (I commented that it must have been, because the time-machine they needed to do that, won't be invented for another year, yet--;). 🤣

@@nickopeters I didn't even notice this time but I also wasn't paying too much attention

Dinosaur bones are not an archeology find. But paleontology.

@@MrPleers It applies to both, sadly there is no toplvl name for the craft.

It’s a weird grey area. On the one hand, “science” isn’t an institution, but a collective process other private and public institutions go through. It’s not as simple as reserving findings to science, and even then, since private land ownership is respected it’s difficult to consistently and legally make a case for fossils being excluded from such protections. On the other hand, when fossils are lost to private collections without scientific description, it’s undoubtedly terrible.

@@bruhmingo It's all about defining what land ownership is all about. Some restrictions are necessary to protect the interests of everybody else. You can't extract all the ground water or turn your land into a toxic waste dumb without permission either.

Respect private property or be ready for your life to become a commodity!

An animal with large territories would also require enhanced smell to find breeding partners. And we know that sexual pressure has had a huge impact on bird evolution.

@@patreekotime4578 T. rex had hypertrophied olfactory bulbs

when you are terrestrial lips are mandatory to keep your teeth from drying. The only exception to that are smilodon, water deers etc and they only expose their canines.

I still marvel at Sue whenever I get the chance to visit the Field Museum

Yeah, capitalism sucks.... What a pity.... We would have being able to know more about t-rex if Stan haven't being sold to private collector!!!

Yea communism ruLz

I can’t believe it’s not a law that you must donate fossils of this magnitude to science and you will be paid for it.

Same, this is why I'm a socialist.

@@frankvandermerwe1487 the Scandinavian model is the most effective

Sue resides at the Field. She was temporarily in Denver while the Field was installing her current display upstairs, which is very impressive!

I agree with you but there's no way to enforce such a thing. You could get laws passed in your own country but fossils are distributed all over the globe. From a legal perspective, there's no way to obtain consensus from all countries, especially since 1) it costs a lot of money to extract fossils correctly and 2) it's possible to have science study privately held fossils. Since it costs a lot of money to extract fossils, if there were laws that they are only held publicly, people who aren't interested in science would have no incentive to preserve fossils. For instance, if someone found something while digging their swimming pool, they'd probably just keep right on digging and not preserve the fossil since stopping would delay the swimming pool construction and they'd have nothing to compensate them for it. I'm pretty sure that there would be less fossils for science to study if people weren't able to profit from their discovery and removal and I would guess that many paleontologists would agree.

@@S0ulinth3machin3 We have made global laws and regulations in the past. We did it once, we can do it again!! Sometimes we just have to cherish something and prehistoric fossils and this history of this planet before we were aware enough to make our own societies and form a documented history has to be preserved for the common good of this planets past and our understanding of it. Sometimes we all have to be humble enough to put money or greed away, just step aside a little bit and do something for the common good of the history of this planet that is larger than all of us!! With this said we all deserve to know the truth of the short and long-term past!! I think if we knew the truth of our past and how we came to exist on this planet or how the moon came to be here it would force us to be humble in how young we are but also how insignificant we are in the universe and being so small also makes us so very unique, special and precious. Perhaps one day we will be able to 'Jurassic Park' in genetically engineered dinosaurs or even manipulate time and space to go back and see them in their natural states, especially as some believe our reality or the universe as a whole is a hologram and we are not working with the 'raw data' but the 'hologram' presented as reality. One way or the other no one has the right to squander away prehistoric fossils or the history of our past for their own gain!!

@@violet-kittychick you didn't read the last part of my post did you? I don't think paleontologists would support it because a lot of people wouldn't preserve the fossils. Also, there are no "global laws" which govern activities inside a nations borders. International laws only apply to international territory (such as oceans or Antarctica).

@@S0ulinth3machin3 I did read it.. the part about the swimming pool!! As I said.. we need to be a bit more humble as a whole about our shared history and past with this planet!! We can be.. we should be.. we have to be if we are ever to understand our role in the universe!! I know myself if I found a fossil while digging to make a swimming pool the pool can wait but this truth of our history can't!! All it takes is a bit of humility and also respect!!

@@violet-kittychick you are naive if you think everyone will have the same attitude. Big construction companies, mining companies, oil companies - think they'll preserve a fossil if they don't receive some sort of compensation for time lost? No way. They're driven by the bottom line. The way people should be is one thing, the way people are is another.

I don't know about which sources to use, but perhaps she said that using geometric data such as how far the hips allow the leg to go forward each step and thus the span while running. If so, such a low estimate is understandable but doesn't take into account the ability of predatory dinosaurs to flex their muscles much faster and with more force than assumed. So I could see that 11 mph running speed being up to half as much as what you'd expect from a highly efficient use of oxygen in a terrifying bird-beast such as these.

Maybe they would able to get up to 20 mph if they could run, but recent research has cast doubt on whether they could actually run because it would put too much stress on the bones. So at a fast walk, it's more like 11-13 mph.

Well she does also think Tyrannosaurus Rex had feathers despite contrary evidence, therefore I’m going to wager her low ball estimate of 11mph could be called into question as well.

It really depends on the exactly species. Most of the time if the birds mate for life the female will be larger. However, if they mate with multiple birds then the males will be larger and/or more colorful.

In most birds males are larger. This is true for archosaurs in general. Unless T. rex formed monogamous pair bonds it's unlikely the females were greater in size.

Do all Primata have the same sexual dimorphism as all Placentalia?

I doubt they were siblings. They probably lived hundreds if not thousands of years apart. When you are talking about a timescale in the millions of years, a few thousand years isn't that noticeable in the strata.

Yeah, Pangaea already split up in the late cretateous.

Can’t really blame him since there’s no laws protecting fossils for science and that money would be life changing for a poor rancher. Wish we would take steps to even the playing field though…yes, offer a good amount for record breaking fossils but millions is ridiculous.

@@natalyrausch "yes, offer a good amount for record breaking fossils but millions is ridiculous." No, it isn't. Fossils like this cost millions, *precisely because they're so spectacular, and so rare*. From a purely economic standpoint, it makes sense. Inflation of the money supply certainly doesn't help. No: the real issue is fundamentally logistical: Scientific institutions don't recieve enough funding for this sort of thing (and don't sufficiently cooperate to pool resources for such emergencies). Sue was obtained by the Field Museum only through the largesse of companies supporting it--as Dr. Connor states in the video. Had someone been able to convince Bezos or Gates to pitch in, things could have gone differently. One could follow the ideas of other nations, and make fossils automatically public, or heavily penalize illegal collecting (which the US already does), but then you get black markets like you find in Asia. There's no easy solution, near as I can tell.