Tyrannosaurus rex had lips

[suspsy]

Article for those who just want the gist:

https://apnews.com/article/t-rex-lips-dinosaur-teeth-53d9cdf709d29bf3c687bbe4737be79f?fbclid=IwAR1iPvixcmw03QTUWdr-xnnNXdJ5iuvk6HydEYDFJ6oGG4ZQUegP8dfncfg&mibextid=Zxz2cZ#lfvg7xbw5v3sgmtzq27

And the paper itself:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abo7877?fbclid=IwAR2OYRvWxO-RErN1wtNE74F9Z5_zsPZ0KYhvneN0ynye_vX0oEGIv_vLszE&mibextid=Zxz2cZ

Thank goodness David Silva went with lips for BotM!

[Eatmycar]

Welp, looks like Wilson is due for a revision! This is so exciting to hear and finally put the lipless dinosaurs to bed.

[PrimevalRaptor]

Both really glad to finally have a study on this and for the result, lips feel more natural to me...and admittedly as an artist they're a bit easier to draw lol

[suspsy]

Welp, looks like Wilson is due for a revision! This is so exciting to hear and finally put the lipless dinosaurs to bed.

Not just Wilson. Pretty much every PNSO theropod.

[Lynx]

maybe we'll finally see lips on PNSO theropods!

[Faelrin]

@suspsy Oof. I wrote about how this was still up in the air for my recent BotM T. rex review. Is it possible an edit could be made mentioning this study? I'll definitely be sure to make note of it in my wip Yutyrannus review though.

Hope PNSO going forward takes this study into account then instead of the 2017 (if I recall right) paper. Was hoping they actually found impressions or something, but this is the next best thing I guess.

[Carnoking]

Will definitely be reading the paper. As someone who's been on the lip side of things for a bit now, this is certainly exciting, although the article summary made it sound like this is just more inference as opposed to hard evidence like fossilized facial integumentary/impressions, which certainly would have been even more exciting.

[Carnoking]

I will also say that I will not be getting rid of PNSO's models, as I still find the toothless look fine on its own

[Bowhead Whale]

Can an animal have lips and not having cheeks at the same time? Cheeks are there for us to keep food in our mouth while we munch and we also have lips. Crocodiles, who don't masticate, dont' have cheeks. Yet, they don't have lips either. If T-Rex had lips, does it mean it also had cheeks, so that it actually masticated its food?

[Funk]

The paper uses modern monitor lizards as main analogues; they don't have cheeks, but cover tyrannosaur proportioned teeth deep in tissue. Mark Witton has a simpler rundown: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2023/03/new-paper-fresh-evidence-and-novel.html

[Pliosaurking]

I mean makes sense as every other tetrapod (besides some exemptions) have lips. I really had no preference to begin with, so I won't be getting rid of any lipless models that I own that I like.

[suspsy]

I certainly will be keeping all my tyrannosaur figures, lips or not. But as I stated before, I am extremely relieved and thankful that the BotM tyrannosaurs have lips.

[Paleo Flo]

Lips or no lips...an interesting topic. I'm curious what impact the paper will have. I personally don't regret buying lipless theropods. All of them are attempts to make the mesozoic wolrd tangible. So, they are never meant to be perfect. That are just my thoughts.

[Bread]

I certainly will be keeping all my tyrannosaur figures, lips or not. But as I stated before, I am extremely relieved and thankful that the BotM tyrannosaurs have lips.

Did he consider non-lipped Tyrannosaurs for this line?

[SidB]

I certainly will be keeping all my tyrannosaur figures, lips or not. But as I stated before, I am extremely relieved and thankful that the BotM tyrannosaurs have lips.

I can appreciate @suspsy 's feeling of relief, especially considering the cost of these figures. However, my sense of the situation is that any such state of mind usually proves to be rather temporary, as we all know, because of the continuous flow of new and (hopefully) improved notions. Consider the status of feathered T-rexes just a few years ago - they started to become almost the norm . Now they're a mere minority report. A new discovery or two can upend the applecart. @suspsy is wise not to jettison his collection of Tyrannosaurs. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? The absurd side to all of this occurs when a few individuals start to mock and slander brands and by extension those who collect them, simply because the figure has an apparently outdated feature or two. Silly, because the tide can return, as we've seen with the absence of feathers on rexes. Disrespectful, because brands like PNSO, Safari and CollectA have contributed so much to our hobby (where would we be without them).

[Sim]

This paper isn't just about Tyrannosaurus, the conclusion is reached by checking tooth wear on a Daspletosaurus tooth too.  The paper suggests that all theropods with teeth had lips.  I wonder though if tooth wear could be checked on other theropods too to establish whether they had lips.  I'm thinking of the ones that are less likely to have lips e.g. spinosaurids.

Does anyone know what species the Daspletosaurus that had its tooth checked is?  I tried searching for it by its specimen number and couldn't find an answer.

maybe we'll finally see lips on PNSO theropods!

Some of the older PNSO theropods and the PNSO Therizinosaurus have lips.  But it would be nice to see them on all PNSO theropods with teeth!

[Funk]

I can appreciate @suspsy 's feeling of relief, especially considering the cost of these figures. However, my sense of the situation is that any such state of mind usually proves to be rather temporary, as we all know, because of the continuous flow of new and (hopefully) improved notions.

You can be sure Thomas Carr and his associates will publish a rebuttal to this down the line, so yeah, unless we find a mummified face, it's all just best inferences. A lipped theropod is not inaccurate yet, just like an adult feathered Tyrannosaurus isn't either.

[Quiversaurus]

I was fascinated to hear about this study, the premises seem pretty compelling (tooth wear, enamel, amphibious crocs vs land-dwelling theropods)...

Part of me lamented that Winter Wilson is no longer as accurate as I thought, but I agree with the previous posts about not throwing all of the lipless theropods out - perhaps one day someone will find an actual mummified fossil and we can finally put this argument to rest.

But till then, I'm here for all the different variations of models (:

[SRF]

The first response of the "lipless camp" against this paper is here as well, just check the end of this video which in itself makes some interesting points against theropods having lips:

[Faelrin]

@Sim Yeah I would have liked to see more examples in different groups represented. Both in regards to the teeth, and like the illustrations above depicting the different possible positions the jaws could take. I'm also curious how this will hold up with spinosaurs, as their teeth are a bit different from other theropods, which is a result of their diet of fish (for the most part).

I'm also wondering what species that Daspletosaurus is from too, assuming it belongs to one of the named ones out there.

I also forgot to mention this earlier, but I think the biggest takeaway from this paper for me was not the lips thing, which there's been a lot of support for over the years. No it was the fact that if the skulls were lip-less they couldn't fully close their jaws without breaking (the "crush closed" position in the image above). That's something we see on a large number of figures, either with jaw articulation or without.

@Bowhead Whale I think they covered this in the paper, when I read it last night.