In the world of dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex undoubtedly has the most impressive reputation. A recent discovery adds to this: recent research has shown that the dinosaur had a type of sensory nerve in its lower jaw that made it easy to track, grab, and shred its prey.
Tyrannosaurus rex or T. rex wasn’t just a huge beast with an equally large bite. It had vasculature or some type of sensory nerve at the tips of its lower jaws which made it easy to identify its prey. This is what Japanese researchers write in the journal Historical Biology.
hopeless prey
“So Terras rex was more terrifying than previously thought,” said lead author Soichiro Kawabe of the Institute of Dinosaur Research at Fukui University in Japan. So the tyrannosaurus was sensitive to the slightest form of movement and could very easily detect changes in its environment, which made its prey almost hopeless.
In addition, the ‘sensitive’ jaws show a hitherto unknown aspect of T. rex. For example, he probably ate more efficiently than he thought.
crocodiles
How exactly did the researchers work? They used the fossilized jaw of T. rex found in Montana, USA. Using computed tomography, they were able to visualize the complex structure of the jaw and compare it to the jaws of crocodiles.
“Our findings show that the nerves in the lower jaw of T. rex are more complex than previously studied in other dinosaurs. The result is somewhat similar to the neural structure of crocodiles and some birds with very acute senses.”
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