"}\nCan we just stop and think about how perfect it is that T.rex got the name it did?
Like, paleontology was still a new field when it was discovered. There were probably like ten dinosaurs listed at the time, and they already gave T.rex the greatest dinosaur name ever. There were thousands of species waiting to be discovered that could\u2019ve proved a better fit for the name.
Imagine if Herrerasaurus\u00a0had been discovered first and they had decided to call it Tyrannosaurus rex because it was a big predator by their standards? It would\u2019ve become a joke about how the great\u00a0\u201ctyrant lizard king\u201d was actually a little runt compared to later theropod findings.
Or imagine if they gave T.rex a less impressive name, like some other dinosaurs. It could\u2019ve been called Wyomingsaurus or kept the name Manospondylus gigas. What sort of name is\u00a0\u201cgiant porous vertebrae\u201d?
But thankfully it didn\u2019t happen. The president of the American Natural History museum looked at this fossil that was just one of the first of an entire world of dinosaurs waiting to be discovered, and thought\u00a0\u201cYou are the baddest dinosaur we\u2019re ever going to find, so you\u2019re getting the baddest name we can give.\u201d
And it worked. It\u2019s been like 119 years since T.rex was discovered and it\u2019s still the most badass theropod we\u2019ve ever found, with the strongest bite force of any land animal and so successful that wherever it appeared in the fossil record other predators disappeared. It was so badass that as juveniles they outcompeted small-to-medium adult predators.
The baddest dinosaur ever could\u2019ve gotten a weaksauce name, or the baddest name ever could\u2019ve gone to an undeserving dinosaur. But it didn\u2019t, and now the greatest land predator to ever walk the earth has the equally greatest name Tyrannosaurus rex,\u00a0the motherfucking Tyrant Lizard King.
#One of the reasons T.rex fascinates me is that it\u2019s accrued the kind of mythic importance we\u2019ve given to a few other animals #like lions and eagles and so on #in a comparatively short amount of time #It\u2019s both fascinating as a real creature #and as a cultural symbol