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FactAudio · 7:24 — 14:18

Tyrannosaurus rex was an orca-sized terrestrial predator, roughly 12 meters long, 5 meters tall at the head, and 7+ metric tons—making it the most massive carnivorous dinosaur we know of.

Dave Hone describes the sheer scale of T-Rex, comparing it to an orca on land, and explains how this mass dwarfs other large carnivorous dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus. ✦ AI generated

Dave Hone · Lex Fridman · 2025-09-04 · original ↗

plays this moment only · 7:24 — 14:18

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What does it look like? What are the key features of the dinosaur in front of us?

It's gigantic. It's almost trite now because everyone knows T-Rex is massive. But yes, if you actually stand in front of 1, you would be seriously impressed just how absolutely vast they are. So I've got a copy of a T-Rex skull downstairs from my office. And yeah, I could fit comfortably through its mouth. So it would be just about capable of swallowing me whole and I'm a pretty big guy. ... 12-ish meters long. So what's that? 14 yards, 4 1/2, maybe 5 to the top of the head standing up. So another six yards high and then seven-ish metric tons. What's that? About 8 1/2 short tons. So A colleague of mine, Tom Holtz, described them as an orca on land. That's it. is a killer whale sized animal. but on legs on land. And those are massive predators. ... T-Rex is massive. It is built. So there's things like Giganotosaurus and Mapusaurus in South America, maybe they get a bit longer, another meter or so in length, but in mass, we're talking about maybe only two-thirds, three-quarters. So T-Rex is just massively bigger than basically any other big carnivore we know of.

verbatim transcript · starts at 7:24

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