The tiny baby arms of the T-Rex might have been much more useful than they seem – BGR

Running in a wild Rex Tyrannosaurus would have been a really scary thing for just about any animal that wandered on the land between 65 and 80 million years ago, and that for an obvious reason. The mighty meat eater was huge in size and had a mouth built to turn the bones into powder. If she caught you with her jaws, you were probably going to have a bad time, but no one was afraid of her little arms … or were they?

As Science live reports, a new study presented at a recent meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology looked closely at the functioning of T. rex's arms and made bold predictions.

The way T. rex used his weapons and for what purpose has been the subject of lively debate for years and years. Some think that the arms do not have much, while others have suggested that the tiny limbs struggle with sharp claws that could have seriously injured their prey or their enemies.

This last cycle of research approaches things from a different angle, seeking to determine the range of motion of the arms as an index of their usefulness. The researchers studied the members of two distant relatives, the alligator and the turkey, as clues. The team concluded that T. rex would probably have turned his hand inward if he wanted to, and that he might have used his arms to hold his prey in place or bring it closer.

The idea here is that T. rex knew that his jaws were his most powerful weapon and therefore used his arms to keep his prey at the perfect bite distance. Of course, we will never know with certainty that if we can somehow look at a T. rex or a similar standing carnivore find a meal, but researchers trust that fossils and modern animals explain to them how the dinosaur could move its members.