It took 3.5 million years for the Tyrannosaurus rex population to grow to 1 billion, so why did it later become a chicken

When it comes to dinosaurs, I believe that many friends will think of Tyrannosaurus rex, after all, in many science fiction works related to dinosaurs, this top predator from the Cretaceous period, are the protagonists of the protagonists.

According to a study reported some time ago, scientists found that although Tyrannosaurus Rex only evolved on Earth for about 3.5 million years or so, however, the number of Tyrannosaurus Rex may have exceeded 1 billion, which is a very large number, which also means that perhaps in what was once North America, and even more so in other places where Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils have not yet been found, this behemoth, once "all over the place".

There was once a billion Tyrannosaurus rex ruling the Earth.

In terms of numbers, this is a spectacular number, however, if placed in the entire dinosaur team, it is not worth mentioning, you know, dinosaurs from the Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, and dinosaur fossils all over the world, which means that the fact that the number of dinosaurs that once lived on Earth, maybe more than the number of humans who once lived on Earth.

So, how many humans have lived on Earth since the birth of man, or let's be more precise, since the birth of Homo sapiens, the direct ancestor of modern man? The answer is more than 100 billion, and since modern humans are still evolving on Earth, this has led to this number itself increasing year by year.

Of course, due to the natural law of "old age, sickness and death", the fact that the number of living humans is not so many, naturally, although there were 1 billion Tyrannosaurus rex ruled the Earth, they all came from different periods, not all at once concentrated on the Earth.

And through fossil research, scientists found that the life span of Tyrannosaurus rex compared to other dinosaurs belonged to the relatively "short-lived", the longest known Tyrannosaurus rex, only 28 years old.

This means that the life cycle of the Tyrannosaurus Rex is very short, and their "replacement" speed is also very fast, naturally, the 1 billion Tyrannosaurus Rex can also be in just 3.5 million years, generation after generation now.

As once the most powerful carnivorous dinosaur on Earth, if not for the sudden arrival of the fifth mass extinction, Tyrannosaurus rex may also continue to live on Earth for a long time, then, there are views that Tyrannosaurus rex did not become extinct, but evolved into a species we are very familiar with - chicken, is this true?

Tyrannosaurus rex is the ancestor of the chicken.

Although chickens are poultry, they are a species of pheasant domesticated by humans. At the same time, if we go back further, pheasants belong to a kind of bird, and modern scientific research believes that the ancestor of birds should be some kind of small theropod dinosaur.

The former is a small feathered theropod dinosaur that lived in trees, while the latter is a primitive bird that can fly in the sky about 140 million years ago, which makes researchers believe that the two are related to each other by evolution. Wonderful pictures

Naturally, if dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, then it is not surprising to say that dinosaurs are the ancestors of chickens, except that it would be a bit unbelievable to say that the once king of the dinosaur world, Tyrannosaurus rex, evolved into a human plate, is this possible?

This idea first started in 2007, when an American scientist discovered through research that the protein molecular code in dinosaurs was the same as that of chickens.

At the same time, as early as the 1950s, Darwin in the Origin of Species mentioned in the domestic chicken originated from the Indian pheasant, has been overturned, which also let this scientist put forward a bold conjecture: chicken may have originated from Tyrannosaurus rex.

Of course, it is not entirely correct to say so, because the reason why the protein molecular code will fit, is not because the chicken is the origin of Tyrannosaurus rex, but because Tyrannosaurus is a kind of theropod dinosaur, and as we mentioned above, modern scientific research believes that primitive birds are originated from some kind of small theropod dinosaur.

Naturally, from the point of view of the origin of theropod dinosaurs, primitive birds and Tyrannosaurus Rex are indeed the same origin and ancestor, at least 100 million years ago, they have not gone their separate ways, so there are a lot of similarities, there is no problem.

From the current study of Tyrannosaurus rex, the number of Tyrannosaurus rex fossils discovered by humans is only about one in 80 million of the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex, which also means that our understanding of Tyrannosaurus rex, there are still many shortcomings, the future along with the continuous unearthing of new fossils, will also be for us to better sort out the evolutionary history of Tyrannosaurus rex, as well as figure out their origins and the mystery of extinction, let's wait and see! We will see!