“How much T-Rex were there?” It’s a question that has been answered before, but a study published last month offers a new figure challenging previous assumptions.
From the dawn of the dinosaurs until their extinction, 1.7 billion of the thin-lipped, frighteningly smart and surprisingly slow theropods roamed the Earth, according to new and improved estimates.
A previous study from 2021 put the all-time total number of “tyrant lizards” at 2.5 billion, but this latest paper, published almost exactly two years later, suggests that there may actually have been far more. a little.
The latest estimate is by no means measly – 1.7 billion is a lot of dinosaurs, after all. But what happened to that other 800 million?
The new model, created by Eva Griebeler, an evolutionary ecologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, tries to address some of the “shortcomings” of the original study and resulted in a much smaller figure.
“In contrast to my model,” writes Griebeler, “the generation times, as well as life expectancies, gross reproductive rates, and reproductive values of individuals calculated by the previous model, all strongly contradict our current understanding of the biology of T. rex and to other theropods.”
“Their values also do not match those of large extant reptiles, birds and mammals.”
Taking all of this into account, Griebeler created an updated model that calculates this T. rex were T. rex– for approximately 90,000 generations, each of which had about 19,000 individuals. Counting this gives the maximum number T. rex like 1.7 billion.
The previous model, on the other hand, estimated that there were 127,000 generations in total T. rexeach with approximately 20,000 individuals.
Fortunately, there appears to be no bad blood between the authors of the two studies: Charles Marshall, lead author of the 2021 report, acknowledged that Griebeler’s estimate was a “more realistic” estimate. Live science reports.
Either way, 1.7 or 2.5 billion, it’s still a huge number T. rex missing from the fossil record. If Griebeler’s model is correct, then only one fossil has been recovered per 52.5 million individuals, raising the question: Where are they?
This is just one of the many mysteries surrounding perhaps the most famous of the dinosaurs, about which we are still learning so much.
The study was published in Paleontology.
(C/T: Live science)
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