Would adult Tyrannosaurus eat humans

Does anybody know and have sources if adult Tyrannosaurus Rex preyed on or ate animals about the size of a human and is there concrete evidence like bitemarks, any residue on Tyrannosaurus teeth etc.

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >you meet a friendly tyrannosaurus at the watering hole
    What do you think happens?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This image activated some primal fear that made me immediatly want to run

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        hold still, it can't see you unless you run

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Nothing. All animals know you respect the water hole.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    General rule of thumb is if you're remotely the same size or smaller than a predator you're a potential meal even if only sporadically if the opportunity presents itself.
    If a trex was hungry and could run down/pack hunt/etc smaller human sized prey it very well possibly did so.

    Only exclusions would be if a particular a animal was poisonous, produced a chemical that made them nasty or made the predator sick, or something else along those lines.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I touch myself to thoughts of that girl being digested by that T-rex

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      gay

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Absolutely yes. A T rex was a glorified opportunistic scavenger. If a slow human was walking around it would absolutely feast on it.

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    say we did find some residue on T. rex teeth. How are we going to identify it when the DNA breaks down in less than a million years and the residue is something like 56 million years older than that?

    even if we did identify DNA from meat caught in a dinosaur's teeth, how are we going to then identify which animal it came from when we don't have DNA from any dinosaur that it ate?

    Are you imagining like the bones of small animals caught between the teeth of T. rex? That kind of residue? We could probably work with that, but it's never been found.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      > What kind of residue?
      I intentionally kept that question very open ended. I was mostly thinking about isotope analysis which was used to identify in what kind of habitat Spinosaurus lived. I guess finding out the diet via isotope analysis is impossible that's why I kept the question open ended

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        ok that makes more sense.

        in spinosaurus they looked at oxygen isotopes because they tell us what temperature the water they drank was, and what temperature the food they ate was when it was alive.

        animals that live in water have cooler body temperatures so they produce a cooler temperature ratio of oxygen isotopes in other animals that eat them.

        this wouldn't really work in T. rex since it tells us if it was eating aquatic animals such as fish, but doesn't say anything about the size of land animals it ate. Oxygen isotopes studies in rex indicate it ate land animals, but aside from that don't tell us much. Also the oxygen isotopes aren't really residue, they're fully digested, absorbed into the blood, and then incorporated in the bones and teeth.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    czecked
    >any residue on Tyrannosaurus teeth
    kecked

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It probably did. Bears and lions eat much smaller prey on occasion.

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I thought she was brushing it's teeth at first

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The immense size difference between T-rex and humans would probably mean that for the most part individuals that haven't learnt to avoid humans would likely opportunistically prey on them, without actually actively hunting for them.

    Have you ever seen the webm with a cow scooping up a small chick and eating it?, It wouldn't be very different from that, we are far from being suitable prey for a predator of T-Rex's magnitude, but odds are it wouldn't say no if it could get us with little effort as an appetizer.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      T-rexes were big, but their size is overstated or over-assumed. The Jurassic Park rex, for instance, is too large. There are exceptionally large elephants alive today that have the same body mass as a typical adult t-rex.

      A person wouldn't be small enough to ignore.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        ...looking again at that picture, those look about the same weight as an average bush elephant, if not lighter. But the estimates still have an adult rex being about 40% heavier on average.

        ...more research:
        A male bush elephant weighs on average 6.6 tons, with a maximum of 11.5 tons.

        Apparently the AVERAGE estimated weight of an adult rex (male or female) is 7 tons, with the largest specimen estimated at 9.73 tons. So they're only slightly larger, with possibly a lower ceiling.

        (note: these are short tons, or 2,000 pounds/907.18 kg.)

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You forgot that theropods have hollow bones. If they had roughly the same weight then T.rex would be noticeably bigger in overall volume.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I'm aware they are birds, but:
            >If they had roughly the same weight then T.rex would be noticeably bigger in overall volume.
            Hollow bones don't make that much of a difference. An animal's skeleton is only a small part of its mass, and having a larger internal cavity only makes a small difference to the mass of bones.

            The reason I said "...if not lighter" is because I imagine a t-rex would be less dense than an elephant.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >Hollow bones don't make that much of a difference.
              somewhat true

              elephants also have hollow bones, they're just full of fat and marrow instead of air.

              T. rex's bones were probably also much lighter because most of its center mass was occupied by lungs. By weight it probably had lungs at least 10 times larger than elephants. It was basically just a walking set of 28 individual lungs with a mouth and a couple internal organs tacked on.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >elephants also have hollow bones, they're just full of fat and marrow instead of air.
                Along with basically everything else, yes, but besides the point.

                Any citation on T-rexes having exceptionally large lungs? 10x larger is implausible for an animal that's roughly the same size as a large elephant.

                Also, a T-rex, despite having lightened theropod bones, would still need to have a robust skeleton. Any terrestrial vertebrate, as it increases in size, requires a greater proportion of its mass to be bone mass. (so a T-rex would proportionally be more "bone" than a 1/2-ton theropod)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                >Along with basically everything else, yes, but besides the point.
                except one important class of animal that's relevant to the discussion. you probably know what it is.

                your picture is a dinosaur drawn with mammalian lungs. T. rex didn't have mammalian lungs, though elephants do. The thing with lungs is they don't have to increase with the square-cube law, while the heart does. So in elephants the heart gets much larger while the lungs proportionate to the heart don't increase as much.

                same with bones, they grow in size and thus weight according to the square-cube law, but again if the animal is full of air instead of tissue, it weighs much less and needs proportionately less strong bones.

                In theropod dinosaurs the lungs actually invaded the bones, so we know about how much space they took up, and it's most of the body. The lungs invaded the neck, shoulders, arms, back, hips, tail, and legs.
                They were almost entirely lung.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                https://i.imgur.com/f04nsq9.jpg

                >Along with basically everything else, yes, but besides the point.
                except one important class of animal that's relevant to the discussion. you probably know what it is.

                your picture is a dinosaur drawn with mammalian lungs. T. rex didn't have mammalian lungs, though elephants do. The thing with lungs is they don't have to increase with the square-cube law, while the heart does. So in elephants the heart gets much larger while the lungs proportionate to the heart don't increase as much.

                same with bones, they grow in size and thus weight according to the square-cube law, but again if the animal is full of air instead of tissue, it weighs much less and needs proportionately less strong bones.

                In theropod dinosaurs the lungs actually invaded the bones, so we know about how much space they took up, and it's most of the body. The lungs invaded the neck, shoulders, arms, back, hips, tail, and legs.
                They were almost entirely lung.

                >The lungs invaded the neck, shoulders, arms, back, hips, tail, and legs.
                they also invaded the skull and ribs on highly derived theropods such as Tyrannosaurus.

                even modern birds don't have as many lungs or as large ones as highly derived non-avian theropods did.

                Sauropods had a similar arrangement, but not as extensive as theropods.

                both were likely adaptations to the very low levels of oxygen they evolved in.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The other thing dinosaurs had was a bird-type method of breathing. Instead of being like mammals that breath in and out, birds and other theropods were constantly breathing in and out in a loop, making their lungs at least twice as efficient as ours. This is why the canary in a coal mine thing works. Birds breath far more air so poisons in the air are far more dangerous to them.

                doesn't affect weight, but interesting from a physiological standpoint.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Here's another example of lungs in theropod dinosaurs

                note that what I'm calling lungs includes the air sacs. Reason for this is they are lined with pulmonary tissue, as are the hollows in theropod bones. Making them functionally lungs.

                not important to weight calculations though since the things are full of air no matter what you choose to call them.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                also of course the air sacs as they're labeled here are connected to each other in a loop, so the theropod dinosaur breathes through all of them, including the ones in the bones. Ducks breathe through the bones of their arms and shoulders and necks and butts.

                it's not just dead air, the animal is breathing through those sacs and bones. The skeleton itself has been turned into lungs.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Thx, anon. Now I'm reading all about bird and dinosaur respiration. (the image I posted was just the first random t-rex anatomy pic I saw)

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                you're welcome, I get excited about their lungs.

                it's probably the best evidence we have that these were extremely active and fast moving animals. Probably much lighter and faster than an elephant of the same size, and elephants are pretty dang quick when they want to be.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                The upshot of all that is T. rex is probably half as dense as an elephant.

                if you had a rex and an elephant of the same volume, the dinosaur would weigh about half as much.

                or for T. rex to weigh as much as an elephant, it needs to be about twice as large.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                Another interesting thought regarding mammals and weight per volume is elephants and people actually become smaller and thus more dense every time they exhale
                they become larger and less dense when they inhale.

                this isn't true of theropods including birds, as their lungs are constantly inflated. They don't inhale and exhale in the same way mammals do.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                also just for fun,
                mammals including humans use their diaphragm and rib cage to breathe.

                birds and probably T. rexes use their legs and butts.

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                because their lungs ran clear from their chin all the way down to their ass crack and often beyond. They were basically just a huge walking set of lungs. Giant scaley balloons with big teeth and a bad temper.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    They did in Jurassic Park so yes?

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Chickens will eat just about anything smaller than them. So the answer is probably.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The immense size difference between T-rex and humans would probably mean that for the most part individuals that haven't learnt to avoid humans would likely opportunistically prey on them, without actually actively hunting for them.

      Have you ever seen the webm with a cow scooping up a small chick and eating it?, It wouldn't be very different from that, we are far from being suitable prey for a predator of T-Rex's magnitude, but odds are it wouldn't say no if it could get us with little effort as an appetizer.

      That's what I was thinking, opportunistic probably but is there any concrete fossilized evidence?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        It's hard for a human sized animal tu survive the bite of an adult t-rex.
        Either it evaded the t-rex or died

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        We have evidence it ate meat and was rather chicken like. If that's not enough proof, anything short of a time machine isn't going to convince you.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >is there any concrete fossilized evidence?
        no

        nor should there be. Theropod stomach acid was strong enough to strip the outer layers right off large bones. Small bones would've been crushed to unrecognizable bits and dissolved completely.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Small bones would've been crushed to unrecognizable bits and dissolved completely.
          this is one possible explanation of why almost all the dinosaur bones we find are of large adults.
          It's possible that most of the juveniles and smaller animals were consumed by large theropods and completely destroyed.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        The broken bones of a Thescelosaurus (or possibly a juvenile Edmontosaurus) have been found within the coprolites of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is the closest animal of the era in size to a human, though really it's more like a pony or small cow. However there's no way to determine if the Thescelosaur was scavenged or hunted. That is the only hard evidence that fits your criteria and question. Everything else must be considered speculation.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Same energy

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      energy expenditure when hunting increase with size to the point where hunting prey smaller than oneself becomes unsustainable.

      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10580498/
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1769424/#

      these studies are about mammals but there's no reason to believe it would apply to other animals as well, albeit maybe at different ranges.

      What I mean is, probably the energy acquired by eating a human sized prey wouldn't offset the energy costs to capture that prey

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Okay. Now compare the size of chicken to the size of a bug. You'll find that size of people should be fine as long as the rex gets enough fat Americans.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          NTA, but he's saying that larger organisms are less energy efficient, so that large predatory animals are less inclined to pursue small prey than small predators, even if the size of a prey animal is of the same relative size to the predator.

          or:
          >Predator A (mass 1,000) ---> Prey X (mass 100)

          Is not the same as:

          >Predator B (mass 10) ---> Prey Y (mass 1)

          ...because predator A is expending a proportionally greater amount of energy.

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