Ever Smell T-Rex's Breath?

Jim Hawkins writes "Well, in case you never have the chance of getting up close and personal with a T.Rex, Dale Air, a company who 'nose' its smells, has recreated Tyrannosaurus Rex's breath for London's Natural History Museum. Seems people made a stink about the rotting flesh smell that would exist on T-Rex's breath - guess someone forgot to tell him to brush his teeth."

Comments

Opportunist Cleaners?

[Mazem]

I wonder if small opportunist creatures cleaned the T-Rex, like Egyptian Plovers clean crocodile teeth and various fish eat the parasites on sharks.

Considering it's diet ...

[dledeaux]

I recently saw a very interesting program on Discovery that hinted at T-Rex actually being a scavenger, not a hunter.

They had several interesting theories to back this up. For example, T-Rex had a very bad center of gravity for one thing. This coupled with the fact that it's arms were so small meant that it would not pick itself back up if it fell. This meant that T-Rex probably didn't run because it didn't want to fall. It probably walked everywhere and in walking, the only food it would be able to catch would be already dead food.

Other reasons that pointed out it's "scavengaristic" diet where things like it's olfactory senses. Porportionally it is the same size as a vulture.

So, the theory that it ate already rotting flesh would greatly contribute to it's problems with halitosis!

Re:Considering it's diet ...

[Moraelin]

I've read that theory too, and it's a bloody stupid idea on several counts.

For starters it would mean that there were _no_ predators over a certain size. (They all look like they're made to walk, rather than run.) Now in and by itself, that would be unusual, but not necessarily impossible. There aren't any predators the size of an elephant nowadays.

What it wouldn't exmplain though, is why did several of the herbivore evolve defenses. Why did the triceratops, for example, need those horns and a massive bone shield, if not for defense? Why did other species grow basically armour plates? What was the evolutionary advantage of that, in the absence of predators?

Nature doesn't create useless stuff like that. If you want a reasonable approximation of the triceratops, take the boar. It can gore something in front with the tusks (whereas the triceratops had horns, but same idea). And while the boar doesn't have a bone shield, it rubs its shoulders to resin producing trees. The resulting hair and resin mixture is basically the same kind of material as your motherboard. It's a sort of armour. I.e., again, you have a smaller and faster equivalent of the triceratops.

Why did it need to evolve that way? Well, for defense. The forward shield and tusks allow it to gore a wolf or two.

The observation that "the T-Rex couldn't run, therefore it couldn't hunt" is also stupid because it only considers half the equation. Yes, the T-Rex couldn't run. Not just because of the small arms, but the bone sizes are all wrong for running. But here's the fun part: neither could its prey.

You don't necessarily need to _run_ to be a predator. You just need to move (in whatever way) faster than your prey. Even if it's walking, or flying, or swimming, or rolling on wheels, or whatever else. What counts is whether you can catch a prey, not whether your kind of locomotion looks like what we'd call running.

Basically the T-Rex only needed to walk faster than its intended prey. Bear in mind that we're talking a 40 ft beast. Assuming that a reasonable amount of its body mass was in leg muscles, it could likely pull up to 11 mph walking speed. As long as its big bulky victims (which again, couldn't run either) walked slower than that, the T-Rex could find a meal.

To understand the tiny arms, you also have to understand the context of walking at that size. Body weight increases with the cube of the weight. Muscle strength increases only quadratically with their diameter. I.e., the bigger you grow, the more you have trouble moving fast.

It's very likely that to maintain a quick stride, the T-Rex needed a _much_ higher percentage of its body mass to be concentrated in its leg muscles, than, say, a chicken would have. The body itself had to be as lightweight as possible, and the legs were massively muscular to move it. Any useless weight, such as the arms, was a _disadvantage_, so the evolutionary pressure was for them to grow smaller.

Re:Considering it's diet ...

[gedhrel]

You ask:

What it wouldn't explain though, is why did several of the herbivore evolve defences. Why did the triceratops, for example, need those horns and a massive bone shield, if not for defence? Why did other species grow basically armour plates? What was the evolutionary advantage of that, in the absence of predators?

I'm not a behavioural paleobiologist, but the absence of predators doesn't seem to mean that there's the absence of reasons to fight. Maybe randy triceratops would fight over territory or a mate? Maybe girl triceratops were just turned on by massive head plates. Defence against predators isn't the only evolutionary advantage they might offer.

Aroma dispenser

[Anonymous Writer]

That "smell" device mentioned in the article that's supposed to hook up to a computer has been done. I recall hearing about devices like it more than once over the past few years. Here is one example and here is another. It's a lame idea.

Lifespan of developers at Dales?

[farnerup]

Item 12235 in the catalouge is mustard gas.

The chemical warfare connoisseur will be pleased to know they also offer phosgene gas aroma.

Re:and this is useful because?

[blahlemon]

Actually, the first poster has a valid point. What the hell it the point of this story? It's neither interesting or important. So they made a smell that they *think* is the same as a T-Rex. They don't have any point of reference, for all we know the T-Rex's mouth could have smelt like a dozen roses, or it could have smelt like ass.

Re:T-Rex breath

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this dead guy found out even more.