A dinosaur skeleton in a museum with people looking at it

Photo by Tofan Teodor on Unsplash

Scans Reveal Largest T. Rex Died After Fight

scienceSep 7, 2026·360 words·3 min read

Researchers have worked out how the largest Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered died, roughly 66 million years ago. The animal, nicknamed Scotty, was unearthed in 1991 in what is now Saskatchewan, in western Canada. Measuring about 43 feet from nose to tail and estimated to have weighed some 19,500 pounds in life, roughly the mass of two elephants, it remains the largest known individual of its species.

Usually only bones survive for millions of years. Soft body parts break down and disappear. But Scotty's rib still had hard traces of old tissue inside it. This material is very easy to damage. So the team used neutron imaging. This is a way to see inside an object without cutting it. The scans made clear 3D pictures of the rib. Mauricio Barbi, a scientist at the University of Regina, said the rib holds many hard blood vessels. Nobody had ever seen this in a fossil before.

These blood vessels explain the death. When the rib broke, new vessels began to grow around it. This is how a body repairs an injury. But the repair was not finished. So Scotty probably died soon after the fight. The team now wants to study other fossils in the same way.

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