![]() ![]() It also aims to correct some common misconceptions. ![]() The book, a gripping read in the best traditions of popular science, sets out to bring the reader up to date with the latest thinking and theories on dinosaurs. So many colleagues of my generation will tell you point-blank that Jurassic Park made them want to be a scientist Ask him a question about these beasts that colonised the world for over 150m years and the words come pouring out of him like a burst dam. It doesn’t really capture the depth of his passion. The science about the biggest land-living carnivores of all time was important, “but the truth, as I see it, is that this kind of thing is just very cool”, said James Farlow, a geology professor at Purdue University.To say that Brusatte, a fresh-faced 34-year-old American from Illinois, is enthusiastic about dinosaurs would be like saying Prof Brian Cox takes an interest in the night sky. They also factored in that the T rex reached sexual maturity somewhere around 14 to 17 years old and lived at most 28 years. The more energy required, the less dense the population. ![]() Then they added estimates of how much energy the carnivorous T rex needed to stay alive – somewhere between a Komodo dragon and a lion. Marshall’s team calculated the population by using a general biology rule of thumb that says the bigger the animal, the less dense its population. If there were 2.5 million T rex instead of 2.5 billion, we would probably have never known they existed, he said. About 100 or so T rex fossils have been found – 32 of them with enough material to figure they are adults. Marshall said the estimate would help scientists figure the preservation rate of T rex fossils and underscored how lucky the world was to know about them at all. “Probably like a lot of people, I literally did a double-take to make sure that my eyes hadn’t deceived me when I first read that 2.5 billion T rexes have ever lived,” said Kristi Curry Rogers, a paleobiologist at Macalester College, who was not part of the study. ![]()
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