Tyrannosaurus Rex swaggered like John Wayne, new research shows

THE T-Rex swaggered like True Grit star John Wayne, researchers say.

The 40ft beast strutted with a cowboy-like gait at about 2.9mph — unlike its speedy depiction in Jurassic Park.

Researchers studied the shape and movement of T-Rex’s tail, along with ancient fossilised footprints, to reconstruct its arrogant cowboy-like gait.

They discovered the 40ft meat-eating beast, which dominated the Earth 68million years ago and weighed eight tons, walked with a distinctive “swinging” rhythm like True Grit legend John Wayne.

Ironically, most of the world’s T-Rex fossils have been found in the American desert which later became the Wild West.

Researcher Pasha van Bijlert, of Vrije University in Amsterdam, told The Sun: “Because of his long muscular legs, people have always assumed T-Rex moved quite fast.

"But like most big animals, he would have walked in a way which was as energy-efficient as possible.

“He would have used his huge tail to resonate with the rest of his body and propel him forward, which means we can accurately reconstruct his walking style.

“We were surprised to see how slow he would have been – and what a swagger he would have had.

“I love Jurassic Park, but they depicted T-Rex running after that Jeep at nearly 40mph, which is pretty wide of the mark. He would have looked much lazier than that.”

He added: “It was a great privilege to study T-Rex and build on what we already know about that incredible animal.”

While walking, two-legged dinosaurs relied on their tail muscles, but the tail was suspended by spring-like ligaments.

The tail would sway up and down with each step, and would “resonate” when stepping to provide momentum.

The researchers made a 3D reconstruction of T-Rex’s tail and concluded its preferred speed was lower than previously thought for such large dinosaurs.

Their study was published in the Royal Society Open Science.

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