The people of Drumheller, Alberta, Canada are big fans of Tyrannosaurus rex who, as his name suggests, is king of the dinosaurs and why wouldn't they be? They are home to Dinosaur Valley, one of the richest collection of dinosaur fossils in the world.

To celebrate the fact, they have a life sized model of a T. Rex. Here is a picture.

How old do you think he is, well more precisely how old do you think that the T. Rex he is depicting is? Well he may be as young as a two year old. New research by Gregory Erickson from Florida State University analysing fossilised bones shows that T Rexs lived between 2 and 28 years. They grew to their massive size of approx 5,000kg by stacking on around two kilograms a day. Now that is a lot of Jurassic Park actors.

When young, attaining speeds of up to 40km/hr along a made road, they probably hunted down actors in open jeeps (and we all know that Jeeps can't outrun that). As their weight passed 1,000 kilograms however this would have become impossible and they would have had to content themselves with extras and lesser members of the cast who were not afforded the luxury of a jeep. Finally, as the budget precluded the supply of additional extras they would have been reduced to scavaging carrion.

Read more in Nature