Science teacher Lucas Curtis on Quora reveals a mind-blowing fact: not only were there dinosaur fossils when T. rex was alive, but there were actually T. rex fossils when T. rex was still roaming the Earth as a living species.
Tyrannosaurus rex existed for approximately 2 million years during the Late Cretaceous period (68-66 million years ago), while fossil formation requires only about 10,000 years under favorable conditions, meaning T. rex was around long enough for the earliest examples to fossilize 200 times over.
Well-known dinosaur species like Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, Velociraptor, and Brachiosaurus had already been fossilized for millions of years before the first tyrannosaur even walked the Earth, along with non-dinosaur contemporaries such as Pterodactyl, Postosuchus, and Ichthyosaurs.
This incredible timeline demonstrates that Earth served as the domain of dinosaurs for at least 230 million years, with abundant fossil bones, teeth, trackways, and other hard evidence revealing their long evolutionary history across multiple geological periods.
The vast temporal scale of dinosaur existence means that many species became ancient history and turned into stone long before other iconic dinosaurs like T. rex emerged, creating a fascinating fossil record within the age of dinosaurs itself.
