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50 free Tyrannosaurus Rex trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tyrannosaurus rex is the dinosaur everyone can name, and this quiz digs into what a century of fossils has actually revealed. It covers where and when the tyrant king lived, how big the largest specimens really were, why its bite is rated the strongest of any land animal ever, what those little arms were probably for, how fast it could plausibly run, whether it had feathers, and why the predator-versus-scavenger argument ran for so long. There are questions on the famous skeletons and the people behind them: Barnum Brown's first find in 1900, Henry Fairfield Osborn's naming in 1905, Sue and her $8.3 million auction, Stan's $31.8 million sale, Scotty, Trix, Bucky, B-rex and the medullary bone that proved she was female, and Jane, the possible Nanotyrannus. It ends with T. rex in culture, from the upright museum mount that misled artists for 77 years to the Jurassic Park breakout. Easy questions ask what 'rex' means and how many fingers; hard ones want newtons, vertebra counts and formation names. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Tyrannosaurus and its best-known specimens, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Our Dinosaurs quiz goes wider if you want more.
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Q 01What does the 'rex' in Tyrannosaurus rex mean?
King
'Tyrannos' is Greek for tyrant and 'sauros' for lizard, so the whole name reads 'tyrant lizard the king'.
Q 02On which island continent, now part of western North America, did Tyrannosaurus live?
Laramidia
A shallow sea split North America in two at the time; T. rex had a wider range than any other tyrannosaurid.
Q 03Tyrannosaurus lived roughly how many million years ago?
69 to 66
That puts it in the very last age of the Cretaceous, among the final non-avian dinosaurs before the asteroid.
Q 04How many clawed fingers did Tyrannosaurus have on each hand?
Two
A splint-like third metacarpal survived as a remnant; the 1915 museum mount wrongly gave it three-fingered Allosaurus arms.
Q 05According to most modern estimates, Tyrannosaurus could exceed what mass?
8.8 tonnes
That is with a length past 13 metres and hips 3.7 to 4 metres off the ground.
Q 06Which Asian dinosaur is so close to Tyrannosaurus that some treat it as a species of the same genus?
Tarbosaurus bataar
Named Tyrannosaurus bataar by Evgeny Maleev in 1955, it was moved to its own genus a decade later.
Q 07The first partial skeleton of T. rex was found in eastern Wyoming in 1900 by whom?
Barnum Brown
'Mr Bones' found a second one in Montana two years later; for decades those were the only specimens known.
Q 08Who named Tyrannosaurus rex in 1905?
Henry Fairfield Osborn
He named a second skeleton under a different name in the same paper, realised in 1906 they were the same species, and kept Tyrannosaurus.
Q 09What was the discarded 1905 name for the specimen later recognised as T. rex?
Dynamosaurus imperiosus
That material now sits in London's Natural History Museum; a 2018 tyrannosaurid, Dynamoterror, was named in its honour.
Q 10For how much was the T. rex type specimen sold to Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum in 1941?
$7,000
About $150,000 in today's money, and a bargain next to the $31.8 million Stan fetched in 2020.
Q 11Sue, the most complete T. rex, was discovered in 1990 by whom?
Sue Hendrickson
She was exploring cliffs on the Cheyenne River reservation while colleagues fixed a flat tyre; the skeleton took her name.
Q 12Sue was auctioned in 1997 for how much?
$8,300,000
It was then the highest price ever paid for a fossil; the Field Museum's staff spent over 25,000 hours freeing the bones from rock.
Q 13Sue is on permanent display in which city?
Chicago
The Field Museum's mount was built in New Jersey, shipped back and unveiled on 17 May 2000.
Q 21The largest T. rex tooth found is estimated at how long including the root?
30.5 cm
The teeth have been likened to 'lethal bananas' rather than daggers, thick and ridged to survive biting and pulling.
Q 22Unlike most carnivorous dinosaurs, the tip of T. rex's upper jaw was what shape?
U-shaped
That let it rip out more tissue and bone per bite, at the cost of extra stress on the front teeth.
Q 23How many neck vertebrae did Tyrannosaurus have?
Ten
The neck was short, deep and S-curved to hold up the massive head; the tail probably had at least forty vertebrae.
A 2012 study estimated an adult T. rex could bite with up to what force in its back teeth?
Q 14Bone studies suggested Sue reached full size at what age?
19
She was first thought to have died at 28, the oldest tyrannosaur known at the time; newer estimates say 27 to 33.
Q 15Stan, the T. rex sold for $31.8 million in 2020, was auctioned by which house?
Christie's
It went as part of a 20th Century Evening Sale in New York and now stands in the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.
Q 16Stan's skeleton has a healed hole in the back of the skull about the size of what?
A Tyrannosaurus tooth
He is the second most complete T. rex, with 199 bones, and named for amateur palaeontologist Stan Sacrison.
Q 17Bucky, found by 20-year-old Bucky Derflinger in 1998, was the first T. rex to preserve which bone?
The furcula, or wishbone
He is displayed at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, and his finder remains the youngest person to discover a T. rex.
Q 18Scotty, possibly the largest T. rex known, is housed at a museum in which Canadian province?
Saskatchewan
The estimate came from the circumference of the femur; Sue's maximum mass estimates run 8.4 to 9.2 t.
Q 19Trix, on show in Leiden, is named after which former monarch?
Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands
She is thought to be the oldest T. rex known and one of only two on permanent display in mainland Europe.
Q 20The largest T. rex skull found measures about how long?
1.52 m
It was extremely wide at the back but narrow at the snout, giving unusually good binocular vision.
57,000 newtons
That is roughly 12,800 pounds-force, the most powerful bite of any land animal that has ever lived.
Q 25A T. rex arm measured only about how long?
1 metre
Osborn guessed in 1906 they gripped a mate; others have suggested slashing prey, or simply shrinking to stay out of the way of the jaws.
Q 26Which palaeontologist championed the idea that T. rex was purely a scavenger, not a predator?
Jack Horner
He argued the arms were too short to grip prey; healed bite wounds on hadrosaurs and horned dinosaurs suggest T. rex did attack live animals.
Q 27Healed T. rex tooth marks on the brow horn and frill of which dinosaur suggest it survived an attack?
Triceratops
The bitten horn was broken and had regrown, so the herbivore evidently won that encounter.
Q 28Tooth marks on the foot bones and humerus of one T. rex specimen are evidence of what behaviour?
Cannibalism
At the very least T. rex scavenged its own kind; other tyrannosaurids may have done the same.
Q 29Smooth-edged holes in T. rex skulls may come from a parasite similar to which bird disease?
Trichomonas
The infection would have eroded the jaw, and in a severe case could have starved the animal.
Q 30Most estimates put T. rex's top running speed at roughly what?
About 32 km/h (20 mph)
A 2017 model suggested anything above 18 km/h would have shattered its leg bones, and its preferred walking pace was under 5 km/h.