Tyrannosaurus Rex Tooth
Late Cretaceous Period (approx. 67 million years ago)
Lance Formation, Niobrara County, Wyoming, USA
No animal elicits the combination of fascination, reverence, and fear 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 (5,900 kg) per square inch, the strongest of any terrestrial animal other than its ancestor, Gorgosaurus. In comparison to other carnivorous theropods, T. rex teeth are proportionately 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 m) apex predator allowed it to hunt virtually every large dinosaur in its environment, including Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Ornithomimus, Pachycephalosaurus, Edmontosaurus, and even other tyrannosaurs.