T. rex had lips, upending its enduring pop culture image

Whether carnivorous dinosaurs had lips has long been the stuff of palaeo-debate. A new study finds evidence that flesh covered the predators’ teeth.

By Riley Black

Published 31 Mar 2023, 14:55 BST

The fearsome jaws of Tyrannosaurus are famous. In museum halls, palaeo art, and even feature films such as Jurassic Park, the Cretaceous carnivore has traditionally been depicted with banana-size fangs and a sinister grin. But palaeontologists have now discovered that the living animal did not have a sharp-toothed smirk—T. rex, as well as many other carnivorous dinosaurs, had lips.

Reported today in Science, a multi-institution team of palaeontologists propose that carnivorous dinosaurs like T. rex and Allosaurus had fleshy lips covering their teeth, much as modern-day lizards do. The hypothesis will likely alter both the public image of dinosaurs as well as how palaeontologists study the ways these terrible lizards fed.

The new research got its start as discussions between co-authors Thomas Cullen, Kirstin Brink, and Derek Larson while all three were graduate students at the University of Toronto. Each had developed different expertise on dinosaurs and their anatomy, which began to meld together into tangible evidence for how dinosaurs like T. rex would have looked. (Read how billions of T. rex likely roamed Earth.)

Whether or not dinosaurs had lips has been a matter of debate among dinosaur fans and some experts for years. The arguments have often centered on whether the addition of lips, like fluffy body coverings, made dinosaurs less impressive and frightening to their adoring fans than the traditional, toothy renditions, and what evidence might justify such a change. The new study finally offers some tangible evidence to resolve the issue, moving beyond aesthetics to the biology of the extinct animals.

“There is a lot of interpretation in palaeo art. It’s nice to offer some scientific data to back it up,” says Brink, now a palaeontologist at the University of Manitoba.

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https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2023/03/t-rex-had-lips-upending-its-enduring-pop-culture-image