{"id":112247,"date":"2021-04-15T23:17:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/?p=112247"},"modified":"2021-04-15T23:17:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-15T23:17:57","slug":"t-rex-were-once-so-common-on-earth-you-could-probably-find-2-roaming-a-washington-dc-sized-area-study-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/t-rex-were-once-so-common-on-earth-you-could-probably-find-2-roaming-a-washington-dc-sized-area-study-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"T. rex were once so common on Earth you could probably find 2 roaming a Washington DC-sized area, study suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Story Highlights<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of jaws,\u201d said study lead author Charles Marshall. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of teeth. That\u2019s a lot of claws.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>The species roamed North America for a few million years.<\/li>\n<li>The authors estimated that the species&#39; population density was about 3,800 T. rex in an area the size of California.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We all know that the most terrifying dinosaur of them all \u2013 Tyrannosaurus rex \u2013 once roamed the Earth. But just how many of these fearsome beasts\u00a0were there?<\/p>\n<p>According to a new study\u00a0that\u00a0estimated the population traits of the iconic, long-extinct species, over their entire late-Cretaceous-Era reign, the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived on Earth was roughly 2.5 billion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a lot of jaws,\u201d said study lead author Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of teeth. That\u2019s a lot of claws.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The species roamed North America for a few million years, meaning the T. rex population density was small at any one specific moment. In fact, at any one time, around 20,000 T. rex would have been alive on the planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The authors estimated that the species&#8217; population density was about 3,800 T. rex in an area the size of California \u2013 or two in an area the size of Washington D.C.<\/p>\n<p><span><strong>&#8216;The one who causes fear&#8217;: <\/strong>Newly discovered species of dinosaur was a terrifying beast<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Using calculations based on body size, sexual maturity and the creatures\u2019 energy needs, researchers figured out just how many T. rex lived over 127,000 generations.<\/p>\n<p>Marshall\u2019s team calculated the population by using a general biology rule of thumb that says the bigger the animal, the less dense its population.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gannett-cdn.com\/presto\/2021\/04\/15\/USAT\/e7a07144-7891-4602-9773-2e358afa53b8-AP_T_Rex_Billions.jpg?width=540&amp;height=&amp;fit=bounds&amp;auto=webp\"><\/p>\n<p>In this Tuesday, March 7, 2006 file photo, life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex models are unloaded for a dinosaur exhibition in Potsdam, Germany. A study released on Thursday, April 15, 2021, calculates that 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex prowled North America over a couple million years or so, with maybe 20,000 at any given time.<meta itemprop=\"copyrightHolder\" content=\"Sven Kaestner, AP\" \/>&nbsp;<span>(Photo: Sven Kaestner, AP)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Marshall said the estimate helps scientists figure the preservation rate of T. rex fossils and underscores how lucky the world is to know about them at all.<\/p>\n<p><span><strong>March 2: <\/strong>Fossils of oldest titanosaur discovered in Argentina<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Only about 100 or so T. rex fossils have been found \u2013 32 of them with enough material to figure they are adults. If there were 2.5 million T. rex instead of 2.5 billion, we would probably have never known they existed, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Holtz, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, calls the calculation an \u201cinteresting speculation,\u201d\u00a0adding that \u201cwe always knew that the chance of any individual becoming a fossil was exceedingly rare, but we lacked the calculation to figure out how rare,&#8221; according to the journal Nature.<\/p>\n<p>The study appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Science, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Contributing: The Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2021\/04\/15\/dinosaurs-billions-t-rex-once-roamed-earth-scientists-say\/7242288002\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Story Highlights \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of jaws,\u201d said study lead author Charles Marshall. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of teeth. That\u2019s a lot of claws.\u201d The species [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":112246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>T. rex were once so common on Earth you could probably find 2 roaming a Washington DC-sized area, study suggests - Fin2me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fin2me.com\/business\/t-rex-were-once-so-common-on-earth-you-could-probably-find-2-roaming-a-washington-dc-sized-area-study-suggests\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"T. rex were once so common on Earth you could probably find 2 roaming a Washington DC-sized area, study suggests - Fin2me\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Story Highlights \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of jaws,\u201d said study lead author Charles Marshall. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of teeth. 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