The Most Terrifying Dinosaur Was Not the T Rex

The Tyrannosaurus rex has the best reputation of any animal that ever lived. Twelve metres long, nine tonnes, and the strongest bite ever measured in a land animal, around 35,000 newtons, enough to crush bone into powder and swallow the fragments. It is genuinely one of the most formidable predators the planet has ever produced. But fame is not the same thing as terror. And while the T-rex was standing in North America at the very end of the dinosaur age, other animals had already come and gone that would have been considerably worse to meet. In this documentary we work through five contenders, each terrifying in a way the T-rex was not. Giganotosaurus, the South American giant that was longer than any known tyrannosaur and may not have been hunting alone, going after titanosaur sauropods weighing fifty tonnes or more. Spinosaurus, the longest predatory dinosaur ever found at up to fifteen metres, built with a crocodile-like skull, dense bones and a paddle-shaped tail that let it hunt in water no other giant theropod could enter. Deinonychus, the real animal behind the raptors in the films, which could not kill you quickly and did not need to, pinning prey with its sickle claws and feeding while the animal was still alive. Quetzalcoatlus, a pterosaur as tall as a giraffe with an eleven-metre wingspan that stalked across floodplains on all fours and then simply flew away. And finally the juvenile tyrannosaur, lean, long-legged and built for speed, the animal that could actually catch you. Chapters: 00:00 The T-Rex Fame vs. Terror 02:02 The Anatomy of a King: Why T-Rex Earned Its Crown 04:26 Giganotosaurus: The South American Slicer 07:55 Spinosaurus: The Aquatic Nightmare 12:16 Deinonychus: The True "Raptor" and the Agony of the Hunt 16:03 Quetzalcoatlus: The Giraffe-Sized Stalker from the Skies 18:45 The Juvenile T-Rex: The Predator That Would Actually Catch You 21:32 A Planet of Monsters: Rethinking the Mesozoic Hierarchy Which of these five would you least want