You Might Be Able to Outrun a T. Rex (2024)

FAQs

You Might Be Able to Outrun a T. Rex? ›

rex is usually estimated at capable of roughly 15–22 mph. A decent runner should be able to run 15 mph in a sprint; over 20 mph is an Olympic-level athlete. So yes, a person could outrun a T. rex.

In a predator/prey scenario, your relatively tiny size gives you the advantage. The T. rex has you beat in pure speed, but even if you were racing from a starting line, you'd have a healthy lead before the dinosaur even got its massive body into proper running position.

Thanks to the limits of metabolism and mass, we can eliminate every dinosaur over roughly 6,000 pounds as a predatory threat. There is likely no animal of that size or larger, neither today nor at any point in history, that a young, well-conditioned human couldn't outrun.

rex could run at speeds up to 72 kilometers (45 miles) per hour. But biomechanics researchers argue that the animal moved much more slowly, perhaps only about 16 kilometers (10 miles) per hour--about as fast as an average human runner.

“The maximum running speeds of the other dinosaurs were significantly different from Usain Bolt's average speed and, therefore, would not make an interesting race,” he said. “Sadly, the more famous Tyrannosaurus rex is believed to have been slower than Usain Bolt.”

The t-rex only has to sprint faster than a human for a short time in order to catch them. Humans are great at long distance running for chasing prey; we cannot out sprint a predator. it's the same way humans work with lizards, lizards are not very appetizing or filling to humans.

Forget all you know from Jurassic Park: For speed, T. rex beats velociraptors.

John Hutchinson, a professor of Evolutionary Biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College, found that the giant dinosaur reached speeds of 16km/h — about the jogging speed of a human. The real T. rex would have found it impossible to keep up with a speeding car.

These experts say size slowed T. rex down. But why is it so hard to be big and fast? Bones, muscles, and posture all play a part.

For heavily armored dinosaurs like ankylosaurs and stegosaurs, these are covered in scutes, thick armor of bone and keratin. A 9mm have a low chance to penetrate, especially on the most heavily armored. A 5.56 might occasionally fail to penetrate due to deflection, but a 50 cal will never notice the armor.

Could a dinosaur survive a bullet? ›

Though it's an exaggeration to call the armor “bulletproof,” an Ankylosaurus could have likely survived a shot from a small pistol, he says. John “Jack” Horner, a paleontologist at Montana State University, agrees.

"Given the brain size we found for it, Tyrannosaurus probably occupied a level of intelligence we don't see in the modern world: more intelligent than crocodilians, but less intelligent than typical living birds and mammals," said University of Maryland paleontologist Thomas Holtz, a co-author of the new study.

A T. rex, for example, had an EQ of about 2.4, compared with 3.1 for a German shepherd dog and 7.8 for a human—leading some to assume it was at least somewhat smart. EQ is hardly foolproof, however.

"But it's always going to be limited," Gutierrez said. "That's the one thing that isn't going to be fossilized — behaviour." An intelligent T. Rex is highly unlikely, Gutierrez said. Tyrannosaurs probably had smarts closer to those of a crocodile than a primate, so rest easy.

rex surely would have been able to eat people. There are fossil bite marks, matching the teeth of T. rex, on the bones of Triceratops and duck-billed dinosaurs such as Edmontosaurus, which were both over 50 times heavier than an average person. But that doesn't mean we would be hunted to extinction.

What is a Tyrannosaurus rex weakness? Although Tyrannosaurus rex is known for its sharp claws and teeth, this dinosaur also had a few weaknesses. One of them is the presence of extremely short arms, which were too short to be used for eating or grasping items.

rex's skull was much stiffer than the snakes and birds to which it was previously compared. The bone-shattering bite of a Tyrannosaurus rex delivered up to six tons of pressure — enough to have crushed a car.