| Tyrannosaurus-rex > Timeline |
Tyrannosaurus Rex Timeline
| Time
|
Event
|
| Approximately 220 million years ago |
First dinosaurs evolve
during the
Triassic
period.
|
| Approximately 67 million years ago |
Tyrannosaurus Rex first evolves.
 |
| Approximately 65 million years ago |
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event:
All non-avian dinosaurs (including Tyrannosaurus rex) go extinct.
 |
| 1874
|
Teeth, which are now known to be from Tyrannosaurus rex, are found by Arthur Lakes
near
Golden,
Colorado.
|
| 1890s
|
Postcranial fragments, which are now known to be from Tyrannosaurus rex, are found by John Bell Hatcher
in eastern
Wyoming. At the time,
these fossils are thought to be from
Ornithomimus.
 |
| 1892
|
Edward Drinker Cope
finds vertebra fragments belonging to Tyrannosaurus rex in
South Dakota.
Cope names the animal Manospondylus gigas.
Note: It is more than a century before
it is realized that Manospondylus gigas is the same animal as Tyrannosaurus rex.
  |
| 1900
|
Barnum Brown
finds a partial skeleton Tyrannosaurus rex
The fossil is mixed with
Ankylosaurus
osteoderms (presumably its last meal), although
this is not realized at the time.
 |
| 1902
|
Barnum Brown finds a second Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in the Hell Creek formation in
Montana.
 |
| 1905
|
Henry Fairfield Osborn,
President of American Museum of Natural History,
describes and names Brown's 1900 and 1902 finds in a scientific paper.
The 1902 find he names Tyrannosaurus rex, but wrongly believing the 1900 find to be an armored theropod,
he names this specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus.
 |
| 1906
|
Henry Fairfield Osborn realizes that Tyrannosaurus rex and Dynamosaurus imperiosus are synonyms.
Tyrannosaurus rex becomes the valid name for the
species on the basis that it appeared first in the 1905 paper.
 |
| 1955
|
Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Aleksandrovich Maleev describes a new species of Tyrannosaurus from
Mongolia which he
calls "Tyrannosaurus bataar".
|
| 1965
|
"Tyrannosaurus bataar" is recognized as belonging to a different Genus
from Tyrannosaurus rex, and hence is renamed
"Tarbosaurus bataar".
 |
| 1990
|
Amateur paleontologist, Susan Hendrickson, finds the most complete (approximately 85% complete) Tyrannosaurus rex
yet found. It is nicknamed "Sue" in honor of the finder.
|
| 2000
|
The Black Hills Institute of Geological Research finds more Tyrannosaurus bones
in the same location in South Dakota as Edward Drinker Cope did in 1892. It is believed
that these bones are from the same individual, and it is discovered that Cope's
Manospondylus gigas is in fact a Tyrannosaurus rex.
According to strict priority, and the normal rules of rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). Tyrannosaurus rex ought now be named Manospondylus gigas, but the former name seems to have stuck, albeit with significant justification. |
| 2002
|
Fossil skin impressions from a Tyrannosaurus rex from Montana show patches of mosaic scales.
|
| 2004
|
A study published in Nature reveals that Tyrannosaurus's Chinese relative
Dilong paradoxus was feathered
- hinting that Tyrannosaurus rex may have been at least partially feathered too.
 |
| 2012
|
A study by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham suggests that Tyrannosaurus's bite force would have been the strongest of any
animal that had ever lived.
|
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