FOSSILS ET AL.

Why The Tiny Arms, T. rex?

There are very few extinct creatures that cause so much curiosity as Tyrannosaurus rex, but their small arms have been a source of scientific debate for decades.

Sílvia PM, PhD 🍂🥥
Fossils et al.
Published in
6 min readApr 19, 2024

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Dinosaurs and their Relatives was the last course I taught at university before transitioning from academia. It was a beautiful goodbye to a career that brought me many fun memories. I recently decided that I had to keep cultivating that part of my past and that I had to use my paleontological knowledge in my blogging adventures. This would not only help others understand this field better but also help me stay up-to-date with discoveries.

Today, I want to discuss an equally sweet, terrifying, and fascinating species: Tyrannosaurus rex! If you ask any dinosaur-loving kid (or even their parents), they’ll likely rattle off a few fun facts about this mighty dinosaur. It’s almost like dino common knowledge: T. rex was huge, incredibly fierce, and… sported some amusingly tiny arms. But have you ever wondered about the story behind those little limbs? Why did they evolve to be so tiny? Why did they stay so tiny? And why didn’t they completely lose them?

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Sílvia PM, PhD 🍂🥥
Fossils et al.

41x Boosted Author | Ecologist and Paleontologist | Former University Professor | Science Editor for JOM | Founder of the-science-blogger.com/