Meet Scotty, the new heavyweight world champion T. Rex

The most powerful Tyrannosaurus rex it is known that a mastodon named Scotty weighed 19,555 pounds during his existence on Earth about 65 million years ago. (8,870 kilograms), or about 6.5 Volkswagen Beetles, reveals a new study.

Scotty was so huge that she beat Sue, the famous T. rex at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History as a heavyweight champion.

In all, Scotty weighs about 880 pounds. (400 kg) heavier than Sue, "which is a lot by human standards, but not as much when dealing with a tyrannosaur," said lead researcher Scott Persons, paleontologist at the 39, University of Alberta. [Gory Guts: Photos of a T. Rex Autopsy]

The researchers discovered Scotty in 1991 near the town of Eastend, Saskatchewan. But it took years to dig up and prepare the king of the dinosaurs, because the rock in which the fossils were buried was so "hard god", told Persons to Live Science. This rock – a highly cemented, iron-rich sandstone – was part of the Frenchman Formation, which dates back to the late Cretaceous, about 72 million to 65 million years ago.

T. rexeshowever, they only lived during the last 2 million years of the Cretaceous, 67 to 65 million years ago.

The researchers were so happy with the discovery that they celebrated with a toast. "The only spirit present was an old bottle of scotch," said Persons, who prompted them to name the T. rex Scotty. However, it is unclear whether Scotty was a man or a woman, noted People.

Once all the Scotty fossils were prepared, the researchers discovered that they possessed about 65% of the skeleton, including the skull, the puzzle (the part of the skull that holds the brain); the lower jaw; vertebrae of the neck, back and tail; and parts of the hips, legs and shoulders.

However, Scotty is not the heaviest dinosaur ever recorded. This honor is probably going to the long neck Argentinosaurus, which could have weighed up to 110 tons (100 metric tons), according to some estimates. (The dinosaur mass determination operation is a very controversial subject because there are different ways to calculate it, in which case scientists have determined the Scotty mass by comparing the proportion of its bones and integrating these measures. in a formula, explained Persons.)

Plus, while Scotty is the heaviest T. rex on the disc, it's not the longest. A T. rex Stan's name, exhibited at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research, stretches for nearly 12.2 m (from muzzle to tail). In addition, the most complete known T. rex Sue remains, which is about 90% complete.

But Scotty has other claims to fame. For example, he has probably reached his 30th birthday, making it the longest life T. rex according to a bone analysis by co-investigator Gregory Erickson, professor of vertebrate anatomy and palaeobiology at Florida State University. Erickson did this by examining the growth rings in the dinosaur bones (like trees, dinosaur bones formed new rings as they grew older).

Scotty's bones also preserved the dramatic wounds of the dinosaur, which had all healed by the time of the dinosaur's death. These included a broken jaw, broken ribs and a squeezed series of vertebrae that Scotty had suffered during his "violent life and of unusually long duration", wrote the researchers of the study.

They added that "the relative rarity of other T. rex specimens as large and mature" suggests that these animals tend to die before reaching the threshold of 8.8 tons (8 metric tons).

Scotty will be on display at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina, Saskatchewan in May. The study was published online March 21 in the journal The Anatomical Record.

Originally published on Science live.