Dinosaurs could destroy a car with their teeth

Just think - millions of years ago in ourThe planet was visited by hundreds of species of huge dinosaurs, and a meeting with any of them for a modern person would amount to inevitable death. The most dangerous ancient giants, of course, were the bloodthirsty tyrannosaurs with the strongest bite among all terrestrial animals that existed on the planet. It is known that due to their strong jaw, tyrannosaurs could easily bite through the thick bones of their victims. In the 1993 Jurassic Park film, director Steven Spielberg even showed how a huge dinosaur bites through a car and recently, scientists have proved that the giants were really capable of it. But how did they not break their skull by biting thick metal?

The growth of tyrannosaurs reached six meters

On the record strength of a tyrannosaurus bite to scientistsIt has been known for a long time - in the remains of their feces there were often traces of overcooked bones. Researchers for a long time could not understand how they chewed so solid food. The fact is that for many years, paleontologists believed that the skull of tyrannosaurs was as flexible as birds and snakes, that is, its parts could move in different directions. This feature helps snakes to swallow even humans completely, but tyrannosaurs did not need a flexible skull structure. But a solid skull without moving parts, like crocodiles, would be very helpful for them - there is no other way to explain the amazing feature of tyrannosaurs biting through bones.

The tyrannosaurus skeleton in the museum

How strong were tyrannosaurs?

In different sources, the strength of a tyrannosaurus biteindicated in different ways. Most of them say that it equals 34,000 Newtons. Most likely, this figure is already outdated, because in a new study, scientists led by Professor Jan Costa took as a basis a twice-increased force equal to 64,000 Newtons. This means that a force of 7.1 tons acted on the bones of the victims.

By the way, once upon a time tyrannosaurs were very small

To check if tyrannosaurs really arehad a solid skull, scientists recreated it in the form of a computer model. Flexible heads, like birds and reptiles, were first placed on the head 1.8 meters long and 1.2 meters high. After studying the resulting design, scientists came to the conclusion that a skull with an abundance of moving parts would not allow tyrannosaurs to bite the bones of its victims - with the aforementioned bite force, it simply could not withstand such a load.

Three-dimensional model of the skull of a tyrannosaurus

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How true are the films?

But in the absence of moving parts tyrannosaurseven the thickest bones could chew with appetite. There is nothing to say about the car from the movie "Jurassic Park", because a huge dinosaur would easily have dealt with it. Only glass, sharp metal and spilling gasoline could interfere with him, but the fact remains - tyrannosaurs could easily bite through the car body.

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Scientists tirelessly studytyrannosaurs and every time they discover something new. For example, in the scientific community today, the assumption that they were covered with feathers is very popular - artists even painted what tyrannosaurs looked like, if this theory is really true. And the assumption can indeed be true, because today there is a lot of evidence of the relationship of dinosaurs with modern birds.