How About A Fun T-Rex Dinosaur Story

Everyone loves a fun story, how about fun T-Rex Dinosaur story? A story of a female T Rex dinosaur?

A story told as it might have happened to learn how she might have lived and where she roamed (in what is now known as North America.)

A time that is referred to as the 'Golden Age' by some. Our T-Rex's world was one of vast, lush, steamy, sub tropical territories, dotted with swamps and seas. She lived near the end of the time of all dinosaurs (almost 65 million years ago).

Her forests were thick with ferns and all manner of undergrowth and trees. Trees that grew so tall and close together, that they blocked the sun from reaching the forest floor. She lived under this canopy with many other species of dinosaurs and even a few mammals. Hers----was a perfect world.

The steaming humidity, coupled with those swamps and inland seas, created feeding zones for predator and prey alike. Keeping the natural order of the species in balance. Compared to other dinosaurs? Our T Rex as well as the rest of her kind, lived for a relatively short period of time, roughly 2 1/2 million years. Her life though, might have gone on forever but for one single catastrophic event in earth's history. But that......is part of our story for later.

Let's get started with our fun T-Rex Dinosaur story and learn some facts too.

Before we start our Fun T-Rex Dinosaur story, we need to know where she lived and roamed

Our Tyrannosaurus Rex ruled much of what we now know as North America. She had no natural enemies, feared nothing and roamed at will in an instinctive world.

She was indeed, a fearsome and lethal predator. Along with her massive head, her upper arms, though small, were powerful. Stubby and tiny according to some artist's renderings, but in truth, her arms, though not much larger than those of a grown man, were many times stronger.

Each arm held a deadly set of claws to strip and tear. Two claws in particular (one on each arm) were turned 90 degrees for gripping.. Whether to hold prey while feeding, or holding prey once caught? Who can say with certainty? Although her arms were stubby, they were far from useless. They were in fact deadly..

Her lower legs were powerfully built. Each leg somewhere around 10 feet long, ending in a 3 1/2 feet long foot. (I hope you are getting a sense of her size) Each foot had four claws. Three in the front and one in the rear. The rear claw was much like what we refer to today, as a dew claw on a chicken. With a well aimed slashing kick, she could disembowel any prey.

Despite her size, she could run at speeds approaching 25 MPH with a stride somewhere between 12 and 15 feet. But, for all of this.......she was really an ambush killer.

She would burst from cover, much like a modern day Cheetah, and run down her prey. Prey she had instinctively singled out. Once she caught or had her prey cornered, she then fell upon it. Literally. She used her body weight (upwards of 6 tons) to hold her prey down. In most cases, she just waited for the prey to suffocate but if not, she killed or maimed it with a savage bite.

A bite that according to best "guesstimates" of scientists today, puts the force at roughly 100,000 lbs per square inch!!! More than enough to cut through any armor plating, sever a spine or slash arteries on ANY dinosaur out there.

Once she had slashed her victim, she need only wait until her prey bled out enough to not fight back. Then she fed.

(The above picture is from The Watford Observer and Bushey Museum)

In her instinctive world she only knew of her need of meat to eat, and lots of it. Hunting the edges of swamps and lakes was a favorite of hers. Any opportune meal of a smaller dinosaur in the water which might be unable to move quickly was perfect.

But, as much as she loved hunting near these lakes, she instinctively knew to stay clear of waters that contained a crocodile like creature with the scientific name of Deinosuchus. She did not avoid this creature out of fear, she just knew instinctively to stay clear.

Just as she knew that mating guaranteed the evolution of her species. A simple reaction. After mating, she would find a hillside away from everything. An area of relative safety where she could build a nest to lay eggs. Laying sometimes dozens, to ensure the survival of at least one new T Rex. Even though our T Rex herself had been born in these same hills, she remembered nothing, thought of nothing. Only instinct drove her actions.

She had no reasoning power. Every action was a reaction--nothing more.

The T Rex Dinosaur is the most widely recognized for many reasons. One, it walked upright, Two because if was the most fearsome of all of the other dinosaurs at the time. But there is so much we do not know of T Rex. First? For example, did you know, many researchers believe that the T-Rex had a feather covered body? That's right, feather covered like a bird. She was an ambush predator first and a scavenger second. Take a look at this book as it opens up some of those theories and discusses them.

The "end."......... for our T Rex Dinosaur began on a typical summer afternoon. She was doing what she always did, she was hunting. Not just hunting but ever on the lookout for a free meal. Having just spotted a small herd of Duck billed Dinosaurs, she was beginning her stalk.

Instinctively, she knew which one in the herd to target. Slowly moving forward, she was ready to strike, when off to the south, there was a tremendous flash in the sky. A flash she ignores as her stalk continues, her eye on that one duck bill in particular. But the flash to her south was now filling the sky......no 'sound' has yet reached her. (the image at right of an asteroid striking earth, from FOX News)

The brightness in the sky is growing more pronounced by the second. Finally she is forced to notice, when the earth around her begins to shake. Shaking so violently she nearly loses her footing. This and only this, has stopped her stalk. She however, remains unconcerned and stops hunting only long enough to glance to the south as she regains her balance. Instinctively, she knows to wait for the shaking to stop.

Shaking ground was nothing new as the ground always shook during a volcano's eruption. There were many such eruptions and it was just a fact of life. When this shaking stops, she will continue to hunt.

But this day.....this day was to be different, very different.

How the shockwave affected our T Rex dinosuar

After a time, the earth's trembling finally stops and as she turns back to her hunt, only to find the duckbills have scattered. Ever watchful she soon spots them again but they are nervous and on the verge of running again. She circles the herd slowly, looking for her victim. But again, in the middle of her stalk, she is stopped by a sound........a far off sound quickly drawing closer.

At long last she turns her head to the south in search of this new sound. But the sound is forgotten momentarily as she becomes aware of the glow that has risen in her sky. A glow that is becoming so bright, it is blinding her with it's brightness, so she turns away and resumes her hunt, because she hears her duckbills again. They are running now, running towards her as the far off off sound nears, she turns southward once more.

With her head turned to listen, she decides she does not know this new sound, nor does she know this experience of the light. Suddenly, the sound is upon her. This sound or pressure or whatever it is, strikes her. Smashing into her massive body so hard, she is slammed to the forest floor. Lying there, momentarily stunned, trees, branches, boulders and all manner of debris fly at her at an alarming speed. They pummel her viciously, wounding her.

The trees of her forest bend nearly double before exploding into thousands of pieces. All around her, trees are torn asunder as if by some strange being. It is at this moment, she reacts. She becomes the fearsome T Rex Dinosaur she was born to be. Regaining her feet, rising to her full height, she turns to face this enemy.

There is no fear, just an enemy she does not know. There is no thought, there is only survival. Her instincts are to survive as she bellows her anger and snaps at what she cannot comprehend. She crushes tree limbs and anything else she can snatch from the air and grasp in her massive jaws.

The debris continues flying through the air and much smashes into her, knocking her to the ground once more. Again she rises, wounded a little more this time. Still, she slashes and roars as she attempts to fight this debris flying all around her.

But as quickly as it began, this storm of wind subsides and the debris no longer fly's about. She stands fully erect as a calm descends upon her shattered forest. Even though she has been wounded, she stands and bellows to all. She has defeated this enemy and roars to all of her victory.

Looking around herself, her attention returns to food but the duckbills have all been killed and lie all around her. She turns to go to one to feed when she hears something she recognizes. Something she knows all too well. The sound of terrified animals----thousands of them and they are all running toward her.

Her instinct kicks in....her injuries forgotten.....she sees only food, nothing else.

The name itself: Chicxulub, is Mayan in origination and is pronounced CHEEK-sha-loob. The crater is near the town it is named after but part of the crater is not just on land, it also under water as well in the Yucatan, Peninsula. Amazingly, the crater wasn't discovered until the 1950s by Mexican Geologists. It wasn't mentioned for some reason until the late 1970s when Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield. (A couple of geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the area) stumbled across the crater.

Then it wasn't until the 1990s, that analysis of those rocks in that area were able to place the age of this crater somewhere near the end of the Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 or 66 million years ago. The book listed goes into more of those facts. Was the impact of this asteroid the single reason dinosaurs became extinct?

There is credible evidence to suggest just that and science will tell us for sure.

She simply does not comprehend

On this day of strange and new happenings, our T Rex Dinosaur does not think, she only reacts. She ignores all else around her as she stands her ground in that swamp. Snapping and tearing at the running animals passing near. They are oblivious to her and react from instinct by running from what they perceive as greater danger.

She is gorging herself, tearing great hunks of meat from anything still on it's feet, paying no heed to the carnage she is creating. She only reacts to her instinctual feeding mode. Continuing to slash and snap at all animals nearby. (The photo at right depicting the ash cloud, is from NBC World News)

This is a day of new sounds and now..... she hears yet another. Again, it is not a sound she knows, but her feeding instinct is too strong. She hears but pays little heed to this sound as it hisses all around her now, enveloping her in it's cacophony as she continues slashing and ripping at the fleeing animals. This hissing though, is accompanied by bright streaks of light stabbing across the sky.

These streaks are actually fireballs flying through the air from the now superheated atmosphere. This effect began with the impact of an asteroid and has caused volcano's to erupt, earthquakes and tsunamis are triggered everywhere. Methane gases leak and are ignited by the lava, causing the forests to explode throwing superheated ash into the sky. It is literally raining fire.

This cascading of disasters, one after the other affects thousands of square miles creating burning forests, fires on an unimaginable scale. So many in fact, they begin to superheat the atmosphere. These fireballs are now landing all around her. They explode here and there in the wreckage of her once great forests. If all of that is not enough? Lightning crashes through the skies as well.

Everything seems as if it's on fire......there is great noise everywhere. She pays it no mind and continues to feed. The world is all on fire, except right where she stands in the swamp .....the air around her grows hotter.....hotter than she had ever felt in her life. Still, she does not think of that at such a time of abundance.

She simply snaps occasionally at these burning pieces that fall nearby or that strike her. She does so out of annoyance as they are interrupting her feeding. Stopping for a moment, she does see the ground all around her is strewn with the pieces and parts of her victims. She grabs up each morsel, leaving nothing to waste.

Never has our T Rex Dinosaur been able to feed so well.......all at one time.

Her air is harder to breathe

As she finally tires of eating, it is becoming dark and her instincts tell her to rest. Never has she eaten so much at one time. She did not wonder why, she just ate. Now, having eaten more than her fill, she is finally focusing on the changes in the sky.

The streaks of fire have stopped arching through the sky and have been replaced by a steady, creeping downpour of ash and grit. It's becoming hard for her to see and breathe. For the first time, she notices the pain of her injuries when she was struck by flying debris. But now there is new pain, pain from the burns on her back from the flying fireballs. She bellows out her rage at this. It is then that she notices a broken tree limb is jammed into her side. Grasping the limb in her great jaws, she yanks it from her side.

Rising now from her feeding, she moves deeper into her swamp, instinctively knowing the mud will help soothe the cuts and burns as she seeks rest.The deeper water will help soothe her bruising and her deep side wound. Like a modern day pig, she reaches deep enough water and rolls, churning the cool mud to coat herself. With the cooling mud now covering her beautiful feathers and soothing her burns and deep gash, she rests from her great feed.

As she rests in the water, her great head resting on a downed tree, she does not see that it is not night, only that it is dark and she is tired. She is tired from feeding for so long and so much at one time. The sun however, the sun that has greeted her each morning for the last 20 odd years of her life has disappeared. But she doesn't know this yet she just knows her instincts tell her to rest. A cloak of dust and ash is quickly descending upon her world, choking out life as it falls to the earth.

Ash so thick, it has blotted out the sun, not just in her small world, but the entire globe. She does not know this but this ash cloud and it's blockage of the sun will soon alter life....all life....the only life this planet and she.....have known. But that's for later because for now......she rests with half closed eyes.

Upon waking fully many hours later, she finds her swamp still filled with many animals. Some living and some dead or dying. Her feeding instinct begins once more and she rises and starts with the dying and then the dead. Feeding comes naturally to her, as easily as breathing.

She eats her fill for hours, but the air around her is becoming hotter, even the water she now stands in feels hotter. Each breath seems to hurt her lungs. This is a new experience. There is no fear, only a tormentor to fight as she rises snapping and roaring at the air. But her roaring and defiance do no good. She sees no enemy to fight.

She moves deeper yet into the swamp to cool her body. Her 'survival instincts' intact

A new experience is at hand

She has retreated once again, deeper into the swamp. She is scarcely able to breathe. She does not know why.....just that she cannot breathe. It is a completely new experience. She bellows her anger at the fires that have been burning all around her swamp for days............and finally, days later, these fires do burn themselves out. There is nothing left to burn.

But the damage is done. The superheated air and resultant fires have claimed most living creatures and plants in it's path, leaving a sky choked with ash and very little breathable air.

With the fires now out.... the air and the water in her swamp are at least beginning to cool. But she remains in the water. After days and days of raging fires, a darkness has descended. There was light from the fires, but with them out? Only darkness. She does not know why, she only knows that she needs to remain in this water. Her 'survival instinct' is in full bloom right now as she lies down once more to rest.

For many days now, the dead and dying dinosaurs have begun to float all around her now.....as she continues to feed. Alert only to this new world. A world of no day............only night.

As the days pass, the bodies she has not eaten, are becoming bloated and begin to rot but she pays them no mind. She sees no other living creature near her. More days go by and our T Rex Dinosaur herself is beginning to weaken. Her coat of small feathers that once covered her massive body, feathers that once defined her, have begun to slough off into the water surrounding her.

Her instinct for survival is waning for some reason.....she doesn't think of dying because she doesn't know dying. The night that now envelopes her world......is complete. The ash and dust cloud has literally turned day into night.

Her flesh is blistered from the burning ash and the intense heat. The continual onslaught of ash and grit has not slowed but have covered the dead animals she had been feeding upon. The still superheated ash and grit have burned her eyes so badly they begin to slowly swell shut. She is dying, and senses that she is feeling something different. Something new.

Blinded and starving now after weeks in the swamp, her instinct tells her to move to the shallower waters. But as she turns to begin her journey to shore, moving is a struggle. She does feed on a few of the larger carcasses along the way, but her massive body has been weakened from her wounds which seem to not be healing. Despite the mud, the burns on her back, neck and head are now festering and oozing badly. She is losing strength.

She fights death, as she fought every adversary in her life. She snaps and tears at the air with her huge jaws. Her head moving from side to side, slower now, oh so much slower as she roars out her defiance. Finally nearing the shallows, she is exhausted....but something is wrong.

In this shallower water, she finds her great strength has left her but she doesn't know why.

Unable to support her great body without the water's buoyancy, she stumbles, going down hard on her front legs, then, unable to stop herself, she tumbles on to her side. She tries to rise, but cannot. She bellows her defiance towards an enemy she does not know or see. Lying now on her side in the thick mud, she is unable to rise. Less than a third of her great body is out of the water and is exposed to the heat and ash.

Days later, unable to move, she no longer see's..... Still.......she does not give up.

She is defiant to the end

Our T Rex Dinosaur's last moments are spent in pain and defiance. She is only able to lift her head from the muddy shoreline, she roars, slashing and biting at nothing. Struggling to bite and tear at her unseen enemy. It is at this point in our timeline that a rain begins to fall. A cooling rain to soothe her body.

Unable to rise, her body that is exposed has been covered in a thick layer of ash and dust. The swamp is slowly turning to a black muddy ooze

The rain continues for days but it is also doing something else. In coming down, it is cleaning the black ash and soot from the skies. Even though it rains for days, more ash and dust are sent up into the skies by the continuing volcanic eruptions and the dust cloud that circles the globe, more ash falls. The sky will not be breathable again for many years.

Our T Rex doesn't know this as she lies there in the mud, she only knows she cannot see or rise. The rain mixing with the soot and ash is turning into sludge. Instead of it being a life giving rain, it is now raining sludge down upon her. Coating her once strong body in a thick....black...heavy...gooey coating weighting her down crushing the remaining breath from her. It gets in her mouth as she bellows, she breathes it in through her nose. It is slowly choking and crushing her.

She is slowly being buried alive:

Blinded by her ash burns, unable to see in her last moments, our T Rex Dinosaur cries out once more in defiance. Her great body refusing to give in to this strange new experience. She lifts her head as if to bite at herself. Her head crashes down only to rise one last time as her lungs slowly fill with fluid. Her great heart struggling to pump, trying futilely to pump blood through her body.

There is no more oxygen to move her great lungs in order to pump her heart.......her heart fails.

Her roaring and bellowing come to a stop. She no longer lives. Her great head, now devoid of muscles to hold it up, crashes to the earth one final time. The sightless eyes seeing nothing. Her jaws snap open and closed a few more times from involuntary muscle movement. Seemingly making our T Rex appear even now in death, as if she is still trying to ward off her unseen enemy....death.

She wanted to continue. But it is not to be:

The rain falls for many, many more months but the dust cloud remains for years as volcanoes continue to erupt and earthquakes release even more methane. It will be years, even decades before the sludge is finally cleared from the skies. With no life giving sunlight, earth's temperature drops, killing plant life.

The sludge continues to fall from the skies, building thick layer upon thick layer over her.as her once wonderful and life giving swamp is slowly buried as well. The ash now covering her once massive body deeper and deeper until finally, our majestic T Rex Dinosaur is totally buried in the thick ash and mud

Waiting to be rediscovered 65 million years later in what might today be Montana or even the Dakotas.

Our story

Obviously our fictional T Rex dinosaur depicted it this story is not about any particular dinosaur nor any discovered in Montana in the 1960s, nor the complete dinosaur discovered in the Dakota's in the 90's. There have been many T Rex Dinosaurs found throughout the years. This was just a lonely story. A story told to hypothetically depict how a T Rex Dinosaur "might" have lived....and died.

Also, by no means, am I declaring that the asteroid strike in Central America (known as Chicxulub ) is the complete, final and definitive reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs. But it is hard to dispute the total and cataclysmic effect it had upon our world

It bears repeating, that such an asteroid strike (leaving a crater 110 miles wide ) and the resultant massive amount of dust, ash and grit thrown into the atmosphere would have blocked the sun for years. Ash that circled our earth for years, blocking the light (scientifically documented) for years, possibly even a decade or more? THAT.......would have had an effect upon ALL life on our planet.

Also, inasmuch as the asteroid landed in deep water as well as partially on land, the resulting plume of water shot into the atmosphere would have resulted in an acid rain on top of everything else.

That meteor strike was unlike anything known on earth, then........or since.

In closing today

When the asteroid struck, the shock wave alone would have caused destruction on a scale we cannot imagine. That shock wave being many hundreds of times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan near the end of WWII. The impact would have caused earthquakes and eruptions of volcano's around the globe.

The eruptions alone would have created an instant greenhouse effect. The forests would have burst on fire from many sources, volcanic eruption, or even lightning. The release of methane gases from earthquakes, mixing with the lava flows, catching on fire and the massive explosions would have been catastrophic to say the least.

Those burning forests (world wide) creating a rising heat coefficient that then rocketed the ash into the atmosphere. Literally setting the air on fire. The effect? Burning fireballs. All of that just might have had an effect upon life on the planet as it burned all living life in it's path. I'm not a scientist, only a story teller, but with the skies choked with ash, there is no sunlight.

With no heat from the sun, the earth's temperature eventually drops, so whatever plant forms (if any) survived the fires? Would have died as photosynthesis is necessary for all plant life and losing it? Everything stops and nothing grows, etc. The effects from the loss of the sun's life giving warmth and light, cascading from there.

In the ensuing thousands and thousands of years, our earth has healed itself. The continents have continued to collide, shift or separate ( as depicted by the two maps, one above and the one here ) over the millennium. All the while, creating the world that surrounds us today. ( The map above, shows what Europe, Africa and Asia may have looked like before the continents separated, while the map in this segment depicts the world pretty much as it is today ) Mammals evolved after the strike and continue to do so to this day.

The strong species surviving, the weaker ones dying out. The natural order and evolution of life.

The end of the T Rex Dinosaurs as well as all dinosaurs.....did change things dramatically. Their demise...ushered in mammalian life as we know it today, beginning an entirely new dominant species upon planet earth.....man. We owe these dinosaurs a debt of gratitude.

For with the Dinosaurs untimely demise, mammals flourished and humans evolved. Our planet was reborn.