Heaviest t. rex ever could have weighed up to 33,000 pounds

An article in the journal "Ecology and Evolution" argues that enormous dinosaurs were even heavier than previously thought.

Scientists from the United Kingdom and Canada found that the heaviest Tyrannosaurus rex could have weighed 70% more than earlier estimates. These findings result from studies using computer modeling.

Many dinosaur species are known only from single fossils, which do not always represent the most prominent individuals of a species. This raises the question of how large the biggest of them could have been. The research focused on Tyrannosaurus rex because scientists have numerous fossils of this species.

The differences in body sizes of adult Tyrannosaurus rex, which are still poorly understood, were analyzed considering and excluding gender differences. Due to their large sizes and their relation to dinosaurs, alligators were used as reference points in the studies.

Paleontologists concluded that the most significant known T. rex fossils are in the 99th percentile, representing the upper one percent of body size. However, to find a specimen in the upper 99.99 percentile (one in ten thousand individuals), scientists would need to excavate fossils for another 1,000 years at the current rate.

Computer modeling indicates that the most enormous T. rex that ever lived could have weighed up to 33,000 pounds, compared to the largest known specimen, which weighed 19,400 pounds.

The largest T. rex could have measured 49 feet in length, while the largest discovered specimen measured 39 feet.