Dino-mite! The surprising truth about how long dinosaurs really lived. <\/p>
It used to be thought that many dinosaurs achieved such huge sizes because they grew slowly and continuously, like crocodiles\u00a0and\u00a0iguanas do, for a century or more. We now know this wasn\u2019t the case, and that dinosaurs generally grew fast and died fairly young.<\/p>\n
We can tell the age of dinosaur fossils by cutting open their bones and counting growth lines; that\u2019s because, similar to a tree, dinosaurs laid down one ring of bone growth every year. This technique tells us that\u00a0Tyrannosaurus rex<\/em>\u00a0reached full size in about 16\u00a0to\u00a022 years, and usually died\u00a0at\u00a027\u00a0to\u00a033 years\u00a0old.<\/p>\n Other\u00a0big\u00a0carnivores\u00a0called\u00a0Carcharodontosaurids lived to between 39\u00a0and\u00a053 years old. The very\u00a0largest\u00a0dinosaurs,\u00a0the\u00a0long-necked sauropods like Brontosaurus<\/em> and Diplodocus<\/em>, seemed to have reached a similar age, although some could have lived maybe a decade or two longer \u2013 perhaps up to 70 years old.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked by: Alex Carlson, via email<\/strong><\/p>\n To submit your questions email us at questions@sciencefocus.com (don\u2019t forget to include your name and location)<\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Dino-mite! The surprising truth about how long dinosaurs really lived. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":26356,"template":"","categories":[30],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives.jpg",1200,511,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives-300x128.jpg",300,128,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives-768x327.jpg",768,327,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives-1024x436.jpg",800,341,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives.jpg",1200,511,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/04\/live-fast-die-young-how-dinosaurs-lived-viciously-short-lives.jpg",1200,511,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Dino-mite! The surprising truth about how long dinosaurs really lived.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/26355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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