According to palaeontologists behind Apple TV+’s Prehistoric Planet 2, the Tyrannosaurus rex was more than willing to run from a fight
PALAEONTOLOGY
On a beach in North America over 66 million years ago, a Tyrannosaurus rex abandons the carcass of a giant sauropod due to the arrival of a Quetzalcoatlus – a strange creature that was slightly bigger than the T.rex and possessed a beak that was two metres long.
This is palaeontologist Darren Naish’s favourite scene in the new series of Apple TV+’s Prehistoric Planet 2. Naish, the lead consultant for the second series, explained the science behind the scene to BBC Science Focus.
“Everyone, of course, always thinks of Tyrannosaurus rex as the ultimate predator: an unstoppable killing machine that just bites other things in half,” he says. “But no predator behaves that way.
“Every predator does things to minimise the risk of injury and death to itself. There are cases where they’ll be very conservative behaviourally, almost cowardly. Because it’s just not worth getting stabbed in the eye [with one of those beaks].”
Prehistoric Planet 2 focuses on creature-creature interactions like this one, asking questions such as: ‘What happens when two giant apex predators are competing for the same resource?’ The answers to these questions, which are depicted in the show, are b
