NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The undisputed king of the dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex towered over all living things in its day. Now it’s making the ground shake on the Upper West Side. We all know that T. rex was the mega-predator, but you may not be aware that earlier ancestors of this powerhouse were small and fast, and, as babies, were tiny and feathered.
Norell told 1010 WINS, "T. rex and other tyrannosaurs have been the focus of a lot of the work [done] by the extended research group I belong to, a lot of things talked about in this exhibit we actually discovered." Information like, how fast they grew (140 pounds per month!), how long they lived (only 28 years!), and what they may have looked like as babies (fully covered in feathers!). A prominent life-size model serves as the most definitive representation to date.
As museum patrons walk around the 3rd-floor exhibit, sounds of thumping dinosaur feet fill the room. A large screen shows a T. rex walking right up to you, walking away, and then reappearing. Models of T. rex babies and ancestors are placed near skeleton casts. A virtual-reality game has you working in a lab and building a T. rex bone-by-bone. The exhibit also explains how scientists know what they know about the T. rex; for example, examination of the dinosaur's feces proved they could pulverize and digest bone. There is a lot they have yet to discover, and their signage is candid about this. Norell told 1010 WINS, "We try to be very careful about we really know and what might be true and what we don't know anything about."
For example, it's impossible to know what a T. rex may have sounded like; a sound-mixer touch-screen allows you to create your own T. rex roar by mixing the sounds of animals we
