Tyrannosaurus rex lived closer in time to humans than to Stegosaurus: Stegosaurus went extinct around 150 million years ago and T. rex around 66 million years ago, so more time separated those two dinosaurs than separates T. rex from us today.
✓ checked
What we found
Did T. rex live closer in time to humans than to Stegosaurus? Yes.
The receipts
- ✓Stegosaurus: Late Jurassic, ~155-150 million years ago
- ✓Tyrannosaurus rex: Late Cretaceous, ~68-66 million years ago
Transcript
What's further apart in time — the T. rex and the Stegosaurus, or the T. rex and you. The answer will break your brain. The Stegosaurus, with its iconic back plates and spiked tail, vanished around 150 million years ago. The T. rex didn't arrive until roughly 66 million years ago. That gap between them — around 84 million years — is larger than the 66 million years separating the T. rex from every human alive today. In other words, if the T. rex could time-travel to meet the Stegosaurus, it would be diving deeper into the past than we dive to reach the T. rex. We are, in a very real sense, the T. rex's closer neighbors in time.
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