T. rex's short arms may have lowered risk of bites during feeding frenzies

Over the two decades paleontologist Kevin Padian taught a freshman seminar called The Age of Dinosaurs, one question asked frequently by undergraduates stuck with him: Why are the arms of Tyrannosaurus rex so ridiculously short? A lifesize cast of T. rex in the atrium of UC Berkeley's Valley Life Sciences Building shows how peculiarly short the dinosaur's forearms were, given that the creature was the most ferocious predator of its day [Credit: Peg Skorpinski] He would...