The secret behind the T-Rex’s killing abilities revealed

The Tyrannosaurus Rex or the T-Rex along with its dinosaur cousins all had teeth that were deeply serrated just like steak knives which helped them tear flesh off from their victims according to some new research.

There is only a single reptile still alive today that has the same tooth structure, the Komodo dragon of Indonesia.

Like this huge 3-metre long lizard, the T-Rex would have been able to prey even on animals that were larger in size simply because of its unique teeth.

And since the T-Rex is known to have grown up to 13 meters in length, they were preying on some pretty huge animals.

These saw-edged teeth were something that were earlier unique to theropods, this family of 2-legged carnivores which included dinosaurs like the T-Rex and the Allosaurus

It was the deep serrations in the teeth that made these dinosaurs more efficient when it came to ripping out flesh or chomping on bones and is probably the main reason why they managed to remain top predators for so many millions of years.

According to Dr Kirstin Brink of the University of Toronto Mississauga, the fascinating thing to notice here is that the teeth of all animals are made from essentially the same building blocks. But how these blocks fit together to form the tooth’s structure is what effects the way the animal processes its food more than anything else.

There is a hidden complexity to the structure of the tooth in these theropods which suggest that they were far more efficient when it comes to handling prey as opposed to what was previously believed. This most likely aided in their success.

Brink’s team made use of an electron microscope for studying slices of the fossilized teeth of 8 theropods including the T-Rex, the Allosaurus, the Gorgosaurus and the Coelophysis.