New calculations show that only 1.7 billion tyrannosaurs lived on Earth during the entire history of the existence of this species. These results were published in the journal Palaeontology.
Previously, scientists assumed that there were about 2.5 billion individuals on Earth before extinction, but a study by paleontologists from the University of Mainz, Germany, indicates the opposite.
A previous study was published two years ago in which the authors developed a mathematical model that accounted for variables such as average body weight, population density, geographic range, age at sexual maturity, number of eggs laid, and average life expectancy.
The analysis showed that probably each generation of Tyrannosaurus consisted of approximately 20,000 individuals. Over a time span of 2.5 million years, there were approximately 125,000 generations of this species, which leads to the conclusion that the total number of Tyrannosaurs that inhabited the Earth is estimated at 2.5 billion.
The team that took part in the latest work believes that the authors of the 2021 study overestimated the egg-laying ability and survival rate of Tyrannosaurs. This means that all the results obtained in the study can be considered inaccurate, and the number of generations was actually less.
After introducing new data into the research model, the result was obtained: in each generation of T. rex there were approximately 19 thousand individuals, there were about 90 thousand generations of this species in total, and the total number of Tyrannosaurs on Earth was about 1.7 billion, writes Gazeta.ru .
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