Fun Fact of the Day 6/1

Happy June, Everybody! And, to kick off the first month of summer (at least in a couple weeks) correctly, let us again convene to dinosaurs for enlightenment. Specifically, today's fun fact concerns an aspect of the most famous dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus Rex, that many may overlook: it's posture. Take a look at the following picture Now, this is a painting by prehistoric artist (that is, an artist of prehistoric life, not a comment on his age) Charles R. Knight, depicting a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It may seem normal, but in fact, this painting contains a glaring error. The tail of the animal is dragging on the ground, and T-Rex is standing upright. This was the view of many early paleontologists, and it was promoted by early beliefs that dinosaurs were sluggish, slow animals, relying on their tails to prop them up in their muggy forest environment. They were, in short, seen as reptiles, in the strictest sense of the term (indeed "dinosaur" is even latin for "terrible lizard"), poikilotherms who relied on ambient environmental temperature to keep them going. But as the years went by, the view of dinosaur metabolism underwent a shift. Discoveries in the 1960's of small, more predatory looking dinosaurs like Deinonychus began to reveal that man dinosaurs displayed anatomies more like those of birds. Deinonychus, for example, had lethal claws on it's feet and arms which could only be deployed with swift kicks and jabs, and it's stiffened tail was best adapted for balance when running. In short, the view of dinosaurs shifted from tail-needy couch potatoes to swift predators, perhaps even warm-blooded ones (the jury's still out on that one, but it is now agreed by many scientists that dinosaurs were at least partially warm-blooded). And with this change came a change to Tyrannosaurus's posture. Now, this shift came earlier than much of the later revision to dinosaur metabolic ideas, mostly due to analyses of the efficiency of the dinosaur's locomotion, but it was nonetheless tied to how science saw Tyrannosaurus moving in it's prehistoric world. The model arrived upon, and the currently accepted one, instead saw Tyrannosaurus Rex standing like this:

This model instead places The tail of Tyrannosaurus in the air, serving as a counterbalance to the enormous skull. This is a much more efficient way of walking, and would have allowed a great deal more mobilty to the tyrant lizard king as well. So, there you have it. T-Rex walked like that, not with it's til on the ground. So the next time you see one walking about with it's head high and it's tail dragging behind it, raise your voice in protest and say "nay!"