Tyrannosaurus in popular culture

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

A robotic Tyrannosaurus at Sector-17, Chandigarh
A robotic Tyrannosaurus at Sector-17, Chandigarh

Paleoartist Gregory S. Paul has called it "the theropod. [...] This is the public's favorite dinosaur [...] Even the formations it is found in have fantastic names like Hell Creek and Lance."[3] Other paleontologists agree with that and note that whenever a museum erects a new skeleton or bring in an animatronic model, visitor numbers go up. "Jurassic Park and King Kong would not have been the same without it."[4] In the public mind, T. rex sets the standard of what a dinosaur should be.[5] Science writer Riley Black similarly states, "In all of prehistory, there is no animal that commands our attention quite like Tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the tyrant lizards. Since the time this dinosaur was officially named in 1905, the enormous carnivore has stood as the ultimate dinosaur."[6]

Tyrannosaurus was first discovered by paleontologist

Hell Creek, Montana, in 1902 and has since been frequently represented in film and on television, in literature, on the Internet and in many kinds of games. Brown himself, despite having discovered many other prehistoric animals for the American Museum of Natural History before and after, always referred to Tyrannosaurus rex as "my favorite child".[7] In Brown's own words, Tyrannosaurus rex was indeed "king of the period and monarch of its race... He is now the dominant figure in the Cretaceous Hall to awe and inspire young boys when they grow up."[8]

General impact

On finding Tyrannosaurus, Barnum Brown wrote to Henry Fairfield Osborn, his employer and the President of the American Museum of Natural History, "Quarry No. 1 contains the [...] bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur, not described by Marsh. [...] I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous."[9] On realizing that the find was unlike anything ever found before, Osborn, according to Robert Bakker, "sat down to construct a name that expressed the position of Mr. Rex in the ecosystem, this apex of carnivory. The name has to be evocative, it has to be beautiful, it has to be lyrical. You hear it once,[citation needed] you remember it. [...] Tyrant. Lizard. King. Beautiful, short, you hear it once,[citation needed] you remember it and it can be abbreviated. T. rex."

Osborn and his Museum of Natural History had for years been in competition with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and its famous Diplodocus skeleton, "Dippy" and had wanted something even greater for his own museum. With Brown's discovery of "the monster," Osborn's museum had its prize.[10] He stated in 1905,[11]

I propose to make this animal the type of the new genus, Tyrannosaurus, in reference to its size, which far exceeds that of any carnivorous land animal hitherto described...This animal is in fact the ne plus ultra of the evolution of the large carnivorous dinosaurs: in brief it is entitled to the royal and high sounding group name which I have applied to it.

Tyrannosaurus gained widespread public attention on December 30, 1905, when the

prize fighter of antiquity" and the "Last of the Great Reptiles and the King of Them All."[13]

In 1927,

Phil Currie cites this mural as one of his inspirations to study dinosaurs.[11] Bakker said of the imagined rivalry between Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, "No matchup between predator and prey has ever been more dramatic. It's somehow fitting that those two massive antagonists lived out their co-evolutionary belligerence through the very last days of the very last epoch of the Age of Dinosaurs."[15]

Since then, popular culture has consistently depicted Tyrannosaurs as "King of the Dinosaurs," analogous to the lion's depiction as "King of Beasts."

According to paleontologist and museum curator Mark Norell, Tyrannosaurus rex "continues to be a subject of fascination, a popular icon, and probably the first dinosaur name imprinted in the minds of children globally. Besides all this, it is the inspiration for budding paleontologists worldwide."[16]

Film appearances

Segment of the 1925 film The Lost World, featuring Agathaumas, Tyrannosaurus and Pteranodon

Tyrannosaurus rex has played a major role in many films, starting in 1918 with

Willis O'Brien.[17] The Ghost of Slumber Mountain is also, and most likely, the first film showing Tyrannosaurus facing Triceratops
.

However, while Ghost was the first of O'Brien's works to feature the dinosaur it was not the last time he would use the dinosaur, using it again in 1925, with the classic

The Lost World. Tyrannosaurus fossils were not so famous at the time of the publication of the novel (1912), and the only main villain dinosaur in the book was Allosaurus, with no appearance of Tyrannosaurus, but this 1925 film featured Tyrannosaurus anyway, for a more dramatic and spectacular effect. For his part, Bakker commented that "Willis O'Brien was a scholarly man, anatomically literate he went to the American museum, he saw the skeletons, he thought about them, he saw Knight's paintings and the sculptures. He listened to Osborn's ideas and although T. rex has a bit part in the movie, T. rex influence is huge."[18]

tongue in cheek mockumentary, "T. Rex: A Dinosaur in Hollywood," no one less than Kong himself explained why. "Well, I had to find a suitably impressive monster to showoff my great strength and ruthlessness. There was only one real choice!"[19]

In real life, film historian and Kong scholar Ray Morton agreed with the previous statement. According to Morton, RKO film studio wanted to halt production on King Kong on account of it going over budget. Merian C Cooper, Kong's creator, then showed the studio heads a 20-minute test reel he and his team had made. The footage was of T. Rex's fight with Kong and was this scene that convinced the studio heads that the film had to be made, regardless of costs.[20]

O'Brien had not originally meant to create Kong, instead seeking to make a film about a lost island of dinosaurs wherein the T. rex would have featured in the climax. When this film, Creation was cancelled, O'Brien used the T. rex model he had made and reused it (along with other dinosaur models) for King Kong. The Tyrannosaurus model was made using a cast based on an early painting by Charles R. Knight. O'Brien stated that the battle between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus was one of the most technically difficult scenes in the film to animate. Many early films depicted Tyrannosaurus with an upright posture based on the current thinking of the time. Most of these films inaccurately portrayed the dinosaur with three prominent fingers on each hand like Allosaurus (though Tyrannosaurus had a third, vestigial finger, it would not have been noticeable at first glance);[21] Walt Disney is reported to have informed dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown that "it looked better that way", and the creature was depicted as such as in the Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring segment in the Walt Disney 1940 animated film Fantasia. Since that time, T. rex has appeared in a great number of "monster" films and educational documentaries.[11] One of the first appearances which portrayed a proper posture and anatomy of Tyrannosaurus is the 1984 short Prehistoric Beast,[22] fully conceived and made by Phil Tippett by means of his so-called go motion technique. In 1985, the 1984 Prehistoric Beast short was served to Robert Guenette to direct a full-length TV documentary film titled Dinosaur!, for which Phil Tippett made new Tyrannosaurus go motion sequences (chasing Hadrosaurus) in addition to those he made for Prehistoric Beast (where Tyrannosaurus was chasing Monoclonius).

One of the most iconic depictions of Tyrannosaurus in film was in 1993's

Jurassic World: Dominion
.

Tyrannosaurus is one of the three dinosaur types whose physical characteristics were combined by the designers at Toho, to create the Japanese monster Godzilla; the other two dinosaurs were Stegosaurus and Iguanodon.

Among other appearances, Tyrannosaurus has made major appearances in many other films, including

Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009), and The Good Dinosaur (2015). The IMAX 3D film T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous (1998) featured a Tyrannosaurus in various time travel sequences, as well as its discoverer, Barnum Brown
.

Some Japanese animated films have a Tyrannosaurus as a main protagonist (You Are Umasou, 2010), as the main villain (Daikyouryu no Jidai, The Age of the Great Dinosaurs, 1979), as a minor antagonist (Magic Tree House, 2011), or as a neutral character (Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur, 1980, as well as its 2006 remake).

Dinosaur Island (2014) features a feathered Tyrannosaurus, reflecting a more modern understanding of the dinosaurs' appearance.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) has the brief appearance of a virtual Tyrannosaurus that Dr. Ivo Robotnik
pretends to be chased by.

Television appearances

Tyrannosaurus has starred in several television and documentary series, including children's programs, both in those intended as fiction, and, more recently, documentaries.

In the American children's show Barney & Friends, Barney is a stylized Tyrannosaurus rex. In the Australian children's show The Wiggles, the character "Dorothy the Dinosaur" is a stylized adaptation of a Tyrannosaurus. Some Tyrannosaurus characters appear in Dinosaur Train, most prominently Buddy.

Tyrannosaurus was one of several dinosaurs featured in the 1974 Doctor Who adventure Invasion of the Dinosaurs, starring Jon Pertwee. A sleeping juvenile is also seen on the Silurian ark in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". A time-travelled Tyrannosaurus is seen in London in "Deep Breath".

In the 1985 animated series

Megatron
turned into a purple techno-organic Tyrannosaurus.

In the cartoon The Terrible Thunderlizards, 'Mr. T' plays a Tyrannosaurus rex called Mr. T-rex. General Galapagos, the boss of the Thunderlizards, is also a Tyrannosaurus.

The T-rex plays recurring supporting roles in

Earl Sinclair's closest friend and the Sinclairs' neighbor), Dinosaucers (Genghis Rex, who is the leader of the Evil Tyrannos), Extreme Dinosaurs (T-Bone, the leader of the heroic group of the same namesake) as well as the anime television series Dinozaurs
(as "Dino Tyranno" and his short-lived evil counterpart "Drago Tyran").

In Land of the Lost a Tyrannosaurus rex played the villain in both the 1974 series (as "Grumpy") and the 1991 version (as "Scarface", who had a scar covering his right eye).

In the Ben 10 episode "Washington B.C.", Dr. Animo brings back a Tyrannosaurus with its skeleton.

In Dino-Riders, the main villain Lord Krulos uses a Tyrannosaurus as his mount.

In the Japanese TV series Dinosaur War Izenborg, a Tyrannosaurus named Ururu (renamed "Tyrannus" in the US re-edit Attack of the Super Monsters) served as the main villain for the first half of the series.

A Tyrannosaurus named Tyrannor was the main antagonist of

Dink the Little Dinosaur
.

An anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus named Johnny T. Rex is one of the villains in the

Disney Afternoon series Darkwing Duck
.

Documentaries and quasi-documentaries featuring Tyrannosaurus have included

T-rex: Warrior or Wimp?, T. Rex: A Dinosaur in Hollywood, Dinosaur Revolution, Prehistoric Planet, Life on Our Planet, The Last Dragon, and Planet Dinosaur
, in which it only appears as a database skeleton image.

Sharptooth
 from the original film are all tyrannosaurs.

Tyrannosaurus-themed mecha have appeared in the

Power Rangers Super Megaforce, Power Rangers Dino Charge and Power Rangers Dino Fury
.

An animated Tyrannosaurus rex named Tina Rex is a bully in Gumball's school in the 2011–2019 animated series on Cartoon Network, The Amazing World of Gumball.

In Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal, a female Tyrannosaurus develops a bond with a Neanderthal male. The series revolves around them struggling to survive in a prehistoric-like world.

In the anime Dinosaur King, the main Tyrannosaurus is named Terry.

A Tyrannosaurus serves as an antagonist in the Phineas and Ferb episode "It's About Time!".

In the TV anime Wonderful Pretty Cure!, a Tyrannosaurus rex was used by one of the antagonists as the monster of the week for the show's 44th episode.

Literature

In literature, a dominant representation of Tyrannosaurus since 1990 has been that of Michael Crichton's, as seen in the novel

novel by Arthur Conan Doyle
, about scientists discovering a South American plateau where dinosaurs still exist). Its skeleton was also used to illustrate the covers of these books.

A Tyrannosaurus rex was the protagonist of the children's book We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (later adapted into a feature-length film of the same name). Tyrannosaurus has also been featured in the novel Primeval: Extinction Event, by Dan Abnett.

Other appearances

Tyrannosaurus has appeared in many media and is one of, if not the most widely used dinosaurs. Various incarnations of, and creatures based on T. rex have appeared in video games, and several game series have featured Tyrannosaurus a centerpiece. These include

Zoo Tycoon series, the survival game Ark: Survival Evolved, the simulation games Saurian and The Isle, and Super Mario Odyssey.

Full size animatronic Tyrannosaurus being assembled in Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park, North Devon
, United Kingdom.

Numerous models and children's toys depicting Tyrannosaurus have been produced, particularly in promotion of the

Sinclair Oil ads from the 1950s frequently featured T. rex,[24] and products from radio-controlled helicopter models to a rifle cartridge (the .577 T-Rex) have been named after the dinosaur.[25] In music, the popular 1970s glam rock band T. Rex
took their name from the famous dinosaur.

In Banjo-Tooie, Humba Wumba turns Banjo and Kazooie into a T. rex for 2 different growth stages in the world Terrydactyland.

In the F-Zero series of video games, F-Zero racer Bio Rex is a Tyrannosaurus whose machine is the Big Fang.

In the Calvin and Hobbes comics, fantasy sequences often featured Tyrannosaurus rex. In one story arc, in which Calvin writes a school paper on the T. rex predator/scavenger debate, he argues that T. rex was a predator because "They're so much cooler that way." T. rex is also featured as the protagonist in the long-running webcomic Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North. Various T. rex have featured in stories published in the British comic 2000AD.

Ursula Dubosarsky's picture book, simply called Rex and illustrated by David Mackintosh, concerns a pet lizard that assumes the proportions of a T. rex in the imagination of a series of children.[26]

In

Tyrunt and Tyrantrum both of which are based on Tyrannosaurus.[27]
Their bodies are differently colored.

Tyrannosaurus rex was also one of the first superheroes in Marvel Comics series.[28]

Former

WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon had a T. Rex skull hanging on his wall, a gift from his son-in-law Triple H.[29] The skull is prominently visible whenever WWE programming films in his office, such as during the 2020 edition of Money in the Bank.[30]

In the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the Tyrannosaurus Rex is the most powerful creature in the "beast" category. As the polymorph spell allows the user to transform someone into a beast temporarily, including themselves or an ally, the creature appears frequently in high-level play. Screenrant refers to the move simply as "the T-Rex strategy".[31][32][33][34]

The manga Dinosaur Sanctuary features an elderly Tyrannosaurus named Hanako residing at Enoshima Dinoland as the only one of her species in the park, with her introductory chapter having the cast celebrating her 36th birthday.

See also

References

  1. ISBN 0-7167-4017-6
    .
  2. ^ Lowell Dingus and Mark Norell, Barnum Brown: The Man who discovered Tyrannosaurs rex, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2010, pg 94)
  3. ^ Gregory S. Paul, Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) pg 344
  4. ^ David Hone, The Tyrannosaur Chronicles, (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016) pg 23
  5. ^ Hone, pg 252
  6. ISBN 978-1-250-27105-1
    .
  7. ^ Brown, Lilian. I married a Dinosaur. (Dodd, Mead, and Company, New York, 1950). Pg 265.
  8. ^ Dingus and Norell, pg 311
  9. ^ Mark Norell, The World of Dinosaurs: An Illustrated Tour. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2019 pg 72
  10. ^ David K. Randell. The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of the T. Rex and How It Shook Our World (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2022), pages 160-161
  11. ^ a b c John "Jack" Horner and Don "Dino" Lessem, The Complete T. Rex (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pages 58–62
  12. ^ "Mining for Mammoths in the Badlands: How Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Dug Out of His 8,000,000 Year old Tomb". The New York Times. December 3, 1905. p. SM1.
  13. ^ "The Prize Fighter of Antiquity Discovered and Restored," The New York Times December 30, 1906, page 21.
  14. ^ "Charles Knight: Prehistoric Visions of a Beloved Muralist" 2002 Field Museum, In the Field article by Alexander Sherman
  15. ^ a b Bakker, R.T. 1986. The Dinosaur Heresies. New York: Kensington Publishing, p. 240. On that page, Bakker has his own T. rex/Triceratops fight.
  16. ^ Mark Norell, The World of Dinosaurs: An Illustrated Tour. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2019 pg 77
  17. ^ TYRANNOSAURUS REX (July 26, 2011). "T. REX - A Dinosaur in Hollywood (2005)" – via YouTube.
  18. ^ T. rex did not actually feature in the book, but O'Brien made sure there was a role for him in the film, T. rex: A Dinosaur in Hollywood (2005 documentary)
  19. ^ T. rex: A Dinosaur in Hollywood (2005 documentary)
  20. ^ Why King Kong remains the greatest movie spectacle of all times by Jim Amos, from Forbes Mar 2, 2020
  21. ^ "T. rex's Missing 3rd Finger Found Archived October 19, 2007, at the Wayback Machine," Discovery News October 17, 2007.
  22. ^ PhilsAttic (April 14, 2011). "Phil Tippett's Prehistoric Beast" – via YouTube.[dead YouTube link]
  23. ^ Poling, Jeff (1998). "Skippy the dinosaur". Journal of Dinosaur Paleontology. Archived from the original on February 4, 2007. Retrieved March 1, 2007. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  24. ^ "Dino Land Travels Database Houston Museum: Tyrannosaurus". October 27, 2009. Archived from the original on October 27, 2009.
  25. ^ "Türkiye'nin Gündemi Burada - Trextuning - Gündemle ilgili en son gelişmeleri web sitemizde okumak için Trextuning.com!". Türkiye'nin Gündemi Burada - Trextuning.
  26. ^ "Rex". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved July 11, 2012.[title missing]
  27. ^ "Pokémon – Tyrunt & Tyrantrum | the Little Nerd". Archived from the original on December 31, 2015. Retrieved December 6, 2015.
  28. ^ "Marvel's First Superhero is Revealed to be a Dinosaur". November 18, 2019.
  29. ^ WWE.com staff. "Mr. McMahon's tribute to the Tyrannosaurus rex". WWE.com. WWE. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  30. ^ Valentine, Evan (May 11, 2020). "WWE Money In The Bank: Vince McMahon's Dinosaur Skull In His WWE Office Is Real". ComicBook.com. Retrieved August 31, 2022.
  31. ^ Zambrano, J. R. (March 26, 2024). "D&D: Five of the Best 4th Level Spells". Bell of Lost Souls.
  32. ^ Leger, Henry St (February 28, 2023). "D&D 5E's biggest problem is the Druid – here's how One D&D can fix it". Dicebreaker.
  33. ^ Stomberg, Chris; Huston, Gabrielle (April 23, 2020). "Dungeons & Dragons: Most Powerful Beasts, Ranked". TheGamer.
  34. ^ Hernandez, Gab (December 27, 2022). "Dungeons & Dragons: 10 Must-Have Spells For Every Wizard". ScreenRant.
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