TYRANNOSAURUS REX may have been a lumbering bully that lived on rotting corpses and used its bulk to rob smaller dinosaurs of their catches, rather than the fearsome predator of moviemakers’ dreams, a new exhibition at the Natural History Museum suggests.
Jack Horner, the paleontologist who was the inspiration for the lead scientist in Jurassic Park, said at the exhibition opening yesterday: “I believe it was a scavenger pure and simple because I can’t find any evidence to support the theory that it was a predator.”
The giant was too slow, its arms too small and its sight too poor to catch anything moving, he said. As with modern vultures, by contrast, the part of its brain dedicated to smell was huge and its giant jaws were bone-crushers, not flesh-cutters.
“Everything says this dinosaur lived on dead meat,” Mr Horner said. “We find that plant-eating dinosaurs were far more common than predators, and T. rex is the second most common dinosaur.”
The exhibition emphasises, however, that the question is open for debate. Angela Milner, from the museum, agreed that T. rex was not built to run far or fast, but she said that there was nothing to suggest it could not catch and kill slow-moving prey, although falling over might be a problem.
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“Research in the United States suggests that falling over while running might have been fatal because of its bulk. But I think it was partly a scavenger and partly a hunter. It could have killed old or weak animals,” she said.
A group of child visitors, who had checked out the life-sized, animated model of the 5m (16ft) beast that is the exhibition highlight, agreed on a show of hands that this was the likely answer.
The exhibition continues until May 3 next year.