Huge, Meat Eating Dinosaur

The Tyrannosaurus Rex, or T-rex, lived 85 million to 65 million years ago in the era known as the Cretaceous Period. It inhabited open forests that had nearby rivers, and also coastal forested swamps. The T-rex was a huge meat-eating dinosaur that walked on two powerful legs. It had an enormous head with large, pointed, replaceable teeth. In spite of its huge size, it had tiny arms and a stiff pointed tail that that provided balance and allowed it to make quick turns while running after prey. The T. rex’s neck was short and muscular, and though its body was solidly built, its bones were hollow.

The T-rex was really big. It was about the height of a giraffe – 15 to 20 feet tall- and as long as a school bus. It weighed as much as a small school bus too – between 5 and 7 tons. Funny enough, its arms were only about 3 feet long! It lived in forests where it hunted and ate plant eating dinosaurs.

The T-rex was plentiful in the forested river valleys in North America during the late Cretaceous period. It became extinct, rather suddenly, about 65 million years ago. No one knows the reason why it became extinct, but many scientists believed a huge meteor crashed into the earth around that time, wiping out all the dinosaurs. A pity, don’t you think?