Tyrannosaurus rex/Novels

"The most ferocious and insatiable carnivore ever to step on the face of the planet."

- Ed Regis

Tyrannosaurus rex is arguably the most famous dinosaur of them all. Tyrannosaurus was the last and largest of the. Commonly known as "T. rex", this species lived during the Late Cretaceous Period in modern day North America and was therefore among one of the last non-avian dinosaurs. In popular culture, Tyrannosaurus has an iconic status shared by few other species.

Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus had very short arms with only two fingers. Despite the limbs' size, each were able to bench-press about 400 pounds. Although these were probably nearly useless while hunting, its jaws were not: Tyrannosaurus has an enormous skull armed with teeth the size of bananas. Unlike the teeth of most theropods, the teeth of tyrannosaurids are very thick and capable of crushing bones and with a bite force of a minimum 4 tons of force and probably more, crushing bone, ripping flesh, and bursting blood vessels of the victim. The skull and neck bones show that T. rex had the largest neck muscles of any meat-eating dinosaur. It probably used its strong neck to twist and pull off big chunks of meat that it grasped with its jaws while supporting the huge head. Tyrannosaurus could bite with extremely strong force - one fossilized skeleton shows that it crushed and swallowed the bones of a smaller plant-eating dinosaur while another shows a Tyrannosaurus coprolite with the crushed frill of a Triceratops.

Prehistory
Paleontologist Dr. John Roxton once created casts of the brain case of Tyrannosaurus and concluded it was similar to amphibians and thus concluded that the eyesight of Tyrannosaurus was based on movement. Several paleontologists believed his theory, including George Baselton. However, some, like Dr. Richard Levine did not believe his theory. Levine argued that because the common defense mechanism in prey animals is to stand still and a predator has to be able to see them, it would be impossible for an animal such as T. rex to have motion-based vision.

Another theory about Tyrannosaurus vision that was proposed by Alan Grant was that T. rex could become confused in a rain storm because it could not adapt to wet climates. Dr. Levine did not believe this theory either. Dr. Grant also believed that Tyrannosaurus were scavengers rather than hunters.

Creation
Tyrannosaurus was created in a laboratory located in a village owned by InGen on Isla Sorna for Jurassic Park.

Two Version 4.1  Tyrannosaurus were shipped to Isla Nublar as attractions for Jurassic Park: a two year old juvenile and an adult (whom Jurassic Park game warden Robert Muldoon later dubbed "Rexy" during the InGen Incident ). While living in the enclosure, the juvenile kept her distance from the adult and learned to catch fish at the lagoon of the enclosure. Since the Sauropod Paddock was nearby, the adult would stare at the Apatosaurus nearby and would wiggle her forearms in frustration. There was a problem in the paddock as tyrannosaurs would sometimes get sick from something in the water of the lagoon.

InGen Incident
see Rexy, Juvenile Tyrannosaur

After the power cut, the creatures broke free of their enclosure. The juvenile escaped first and the adult escaped second, then proceeded to attack the cars. The adult didn't kill anyone, although she nearly killed Dr. Malcolm and almost ate Tim. After the attack, the juvenile later killed Ed Regis.

The next day, the adult hunts and kills a Hadrosaurus, then falls asleep near the Raft Storage Building with her kill. Dr. Grant and the children later find her sleeping and managed to acquire a raft that they used to go down a river, but when Lex starts to cough uncontrollably she woke up and took to the water, swimming after them, though she abandoned the pursuit when she sees the juvenile T. rex with dead Apatosaurus.

After an unsuccessfully chasing the juvenile, the adult found herself in the jungles of the Jungle River Cruise. While there, she made a failed attempt at attack Dr. Grant and the kids in their raft before disturbing a pair of Dilophosaurus in courtship. Afterward, she is found by Muldoon and Donald Gennaro. Muldoon shoots she with a very large tranquilizer dart, which causes the Tyrannosaurus rex to pass out while she was trying to eat Tim behind a waterfall. It is possible, although not directly mentioned, that the adult Tyrannosaurus drowned as she is never retrieved by the staff.

Wild on Isla Sorna
Though the Tyrannosaurus on Isla Nublar were destroyed, there were still surviving individuals on the neighboring island Isla Sorna. From 1988-1989, after six weeks of goats milk, all the carnivores being raised, including Tyrannosaurus, were fed a protein from ground up sheep. Eventually, this allowed for the spread of the prion known as "DX" among the cloned dinosaurs. To combat this, they outfitted the dinosaurs, including Tyrannosaurus, with Grumbach field tags and released them into the wild, tracking them through a radio network.

At some point after November 1989 or later, InGen personal abandoned the island and the work they were doing, the most likely cause being the company's bankruptcy. By 1995, there were two adult T. rex on the island, a male and female, and had a nest located south of the island's Village. It is unknown how the male existed as Tyrannosaurus rex was not among the six dinosaurs with amphibian DNA and the cloned dinosaurs were irradiated to destroy gonadal tissue.

1995 Isla Sorna Expedition
see Tyrannosaur Buck, Tyrannosaur Doe, Junior

At the time of the expedition, two eggs in the nest of the Tyrannosaurus couple had hatched. While the expedition team lead by Dr. Ian Malcolm was exploring the village's manufacturing plant, the male Tyrannosaurus entered the area. Having been alerted by Arby Benton over the radio of their Ford Explorer and seeing the approaching T. rex on the car's dashboard, the men stayed tensely in the car. During the male's examination, he scent marked the car before returning to his nest.

As the male Tyrannosaurus traveled to the nest, Dr. Richard Levine spotted the carnivore and proceeded to follow him via bicycle. Upon reaching the nest, Dr. Levine climbed up a tree where he observed the parental behavior of the large carnivores. Arby saw Levine when he was following the T. rex on the Site B Network and asked Dr. Jack "Doc" Thorne if he had seen Levine, which Throne had not. Since the purpose of the expedition team's arrival was to find Dr. Levine Throne asked Arby how and where he had seen Levine. After receiving Richard's coordinates, Throne took the motorcycle on the Explorer and followed the male Tyrannosaurus to the T. rex nest. When Jack found Levine, Levine accidentally fell from the tree he was in. His fall made too much noise which alerted the tyrannosaur parents. One of them chased the two men our of their nest and briefly pursued them when they were on Throne's motorcycle until they out of range of the nesting ground.

Later, the team of Biosyn agents lead by Dr. Lewis Dodgson tried to steal the eggs of Tyrannosaurus. The attempt fails, resulting in George Baselton being eaten, Howard King breaking the leg of one of the babies, and their modified jeep being pushed stuck in thick undergrowth. King and Dodgson were both rendered unconscious from the raid.

Afterward, Ian Malcolm, Sarah Harding, Eddie Carr, and Jack Throne arrived at the nest while the parents were gone. The team had become aware of BioSyn's presence on the island when they saw their modified jeep going to the Tyrannosaurus territory and Arby and Kelly Curtis witnessed BioSyn's raid from the monitor inside the trailer while the adults driving to that location got reports over the radio from the two.

As they prepared to leave due to the parents soon returning to their nest, Eddie asked what would be done about the baby dinosaur with the broken leg. He was commanded by both Harding and Malcolm to kill it, as its broken leg would kill it regardless. However, Eddie, believing that the juvenile could easily be healed and returned back to its nest, instead secretly injected it with morphine and drove back to the trailer with the tyrannosaur. Thorne, Malcolm, and Levine believed Eddie's actions to be wrong, but Dr. Harding chose to heal the young T. rex anyway and the team puts a temporary cast on its broken leg.

While Malcolm and Harding were alone together trying to nurse the baby back to help the parents arrived and began to kick the trailer down a cliff even after the people inside gave them their baby. However, Throne scared off the Tyrannosaurs using the modified Biosyn jeep that had just been unstuck and that Thorne also found.

In the final encounter with the human visitors, the father Tyrannosaur approached Harding's Explorer just after Dodgson tried to get inside the vehicle. Dodgson hid underneath the vehicle with her, but she pushed him to the side where he was then snatched by the T. rex. Dodgson was then taken to be eaten by the hatchlings, one of which had just hatched.

The clones, as well as the rest of the dinosaurs, were doomed to extinction once more in the future due to the spread of the DX prions on Isla Sorna.

Characteristics
Like all the cloned theropods, the cloned Tyrannosaurus had pronated hands. These traits were most likely implemented by InGen on purpose, as at the time T. rex had been cloned the study disproving pronated hands had not been published.

Version 4.1
At Version 4.1  and from the age of two and into adulthood, the clones had fully scaled skin. As adults, the skin was very sensitive in this version of Tyrannosaurus and it could sunburn easily, causing them to seek shade from the sunlight. The skin color of the adults was described as being a mottled reddish brown. The adults were known to be semi-aquatic and swam like a crocodile and had very strong and flexible tongue akin to an elephant's trunk.

Wild
The Tyrannosaurus that were wild on Isla Sorna were similar to the Version 4.1 Tyrannosaurus, but was capable of somehow changing sex in the absence of . Though the adults had brown scaled skin, the infants had red s with a ring of these feathers in pale white around their necks.

There was sexual dimorphism among the clones. One of the most visible traits between the sexes was that females had longer tails than the males. This seems to have been done intentionally by InGen scientists as at the time of the cloning process there was a belief that there was sexual dimorphism in the real T. rex. The Isla Sorna map featured on the first pages of the novel give the length of the Tyrannosaurus as 42 ft (12.8 meters), but it is unknown which sex this represents.

The clones showed great parental care for their young. Tyrannosaurs would make pair bonds after mating and would constantly tend to their nests. The only known nest made by the cloned T. rex was a mud mound that was nearly 4 feet high and the female who owned this nest laid a total of 6 eggs.

Appearances

 * Jurassic Park
 * The Lost World