Gentle lover and T-Rex don’t usually go hand-in-hand, but new research has found that the vicious dinosaur may actually have had a sensitive side.
New findings published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports suggest that, despite its terrifying appearance, the T-Rex may have been quite the caring companion.
Scientists believe that, before mating, the Tyrannosaurus Rex rubbed their highly sensitive snouts together as a form of pre-historic foreplay.
It was already understood that the tyrannosaurs used their massive snouts to explore their environment, build nests and maneuver their eggs and offspring, according to the study.
“In courtship, tyrannosaurids might have rubbed their sensitive faces together as a vital part of pre-copulatory play,” the scientists said in the journal.
These amazing revelations follow the discovery of a new type of tyrannosaur, Daspletosaurus horneri (Horner's frightful lizard) in Montana last August.
These smaller Rex relatives, who averaged around 30 feet (9m) in length, lived about ten million years before their giant T-Rex cousins, who walked the earth roughly 65 million years ago.
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