Dinosaur (And Other Prehistoric Species) Myths

A Tyrannosaurus Rex Had Small, Useless Arms

      Tyrannosauruses have what seems to be small and useless arms due to their massive size, however this is very untrue. Rex's actually have massive arms in comparison to a humans, as theirs were over three feet in length.

       As well as being strong, Rex's also used their arms to hold down prey (and other things) as they sometimes would need to. By "strong" they were able lift an entire grand piano, or be able to bench-press 400 pounds with each arm with muscles over three times more powerful than the adult human's.

       While the Rex's arms were quite impressive in strength, movement was rather limited, as the arms only moved at around a 40 degree angle. Other, smaller, species of theropods (like the Deinonychus) had arms larger in proportion and were more appropriate for their use, whereas small arms in comparison to the body don't require a wide range of movement as ours do.

There are many theories as to what a T. Rex's arms were meant for. A few suggestions have been listed below from an article I have found.

1) T. Rex used its arms to lever itself off the ground if it happened to be knocked off its feet during battle, say, with an eager-not-to-be-eaten Triceratops (which can be a tough proposition if you weigh eight or nine tons), or if it slept in a prone position.

2) T. Rex used its arms to clutch tightly onto squirming prey before it delivered a killer bite with its jaws. (This dinosaur's powerful arm muscles lend further credence to this idea, but once again, we can't adduce any direct fossil evidence for this behavior.)

At this point you may be asking: how do we know if T. Rex used its arms at all? Well, nature tends to be very economical in its operation: it's unlikely that the tiny arms of theropod dinosaurs would have persisted into the late Cretaceous period if these limbs didn't serve at least some useful purpose.

(The most extreme example in this respect wasn't T. Rex, but the two-ton Carnotaurus, the arms, and hands of which were truly nubbin-like; even so, this dinosaur probably needed its stunted limbs to at least push itself off the ground if it happened to fall down.)

Website Link:

https://www.thoughtco.com/tyrannosaurus-rex-tiny-arms-1092018

[A/N:

Well, that's one chapter down after a month without updating. I'm gonna be honest and say I'm probably not going to be consistent with this book.]