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The T. rex
Quick! Name the scariest thing about a T. rex. Did you say the dinosaur’s long, sharp teeth? You’re not alone if you did!
In many movies and drawings, scary T. rex teeth are easy to see. The dino’s long chompers are often shown poking out of its mouth.
But some paleontologists say those drawings are wrong. They think the T. rex had big lips that covered its teeth.
No one knows exactly what their mouths looked like. After all, dinos became extinct, or died out, about 65 million years ago. But a new study tried to find out if T. rex had teeth that stuck out. The study compared fossils of dinosaur teeth with crocodile teeth.
Scientists discovered the two kinds of teeth didn’t have the same type of damage. Crocodile teeth often break during eating and fighting. That’s because crocs don’t have big lips to protect their teeth.
But experts saw less damage on the dino teeth. That led them to believe that the T. rex had big lips. They hid and protected its teeth—and maybe made the dino less scary!