T. Rex Bite Strongest Ever on Land—Ten Times Greater Than Gator's
Dinosaur still no match for prehistoric "megatooth" sharks.
(Related video: "T. Rex's Bone-Shattering Bite Filmed.")
Much conventional wisdom about the world's most famous dinosaur species has been called into question in recent years—for instance, whether the 40-foot-long (12-meter-long) T. rex species could run or only plod along.
Likewise, some have contended that the supposedly mighty predator actually had a modest bite, limiting T. rex to scavenging.
To see how forcefully T. rex could bite, biomechanicists involved in the new study used laser scanners to digitize juvenile and adult T. rex skulls. The team then used computer models to reconstruct the dinosaur's jaw muscles and analyze bite performance.
The models suggest that an adult T. rex was capable of a maximum bite force of 35,000 to 57,000 newtons at
