A L🌺ONG AND WELL-PRESERVED TOOTH FROM THE KING OF THE ꦇDINOSAURS

No animal elicits a combination of fascination, fear, and reverance quite like that of Tyrannosaurus rex, the "tyrant lizard king." Dominating the western landscape of Late Cretaceous North America, T. rex's five-foot-long skull was packed with 60 teeth and featured a bone-crushing bite force of nearly 13,000 pounds per square inch, the strongest of any terrestrial animal other than Gorgosaurus, its tyrannosaur relative. In comparison to other carnivorous theropods, Tyrannosaurus rex teeth are proportionally huge. Robust and thickly-enameled crowns strengthened dozens of teeth, with serrations on both the posterior and anterior edges. The almost unrivaled power of this 40-foot-long (12.2 meter) apex predator allowed it to hunt virtually every large dinosaur in its environment, including Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Ornithomimus, Pachycephalosaurus, Edmontosaurus, and even other tyrannosaurs.