New York: A lot of people mistakenly believe that Tyrannosaurus rex stood upright with its tail on the ground but in actuality they had a more bird-like posture, tail in the air and head pitched forward of its two massive legs.
According to the study authors, this discovery led major museums to update their T. rex displays and popular books have largely gotten the posture right since around 1990.
But when the researchers asked college students and kids to draw a Tyrannosaur rex, most of them gave it an upright posture instead, as they got the wrong idea from toys like Barney, games and other pop culture items, the New York Post reported.
Warren Allmon, a paleontology professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and an author of the study, struck him when he saw a box of dinosaur chicken nuggets at a grocery store.
"What they grew up with on their pajamas and their macaroni and wallpaper and everything else is the tail-dragging posture," he said.
The authors analysed 316 T. rex drawings made by pupils at Ithaca College and kids who visited an Ithaca museum.
Seventy-two percent of the Ithaca college students and 63 percent of the kids drew the animal as being too upright.
When the authors looked at other depictions of the dinosaur, they found the obsolete standing posture remains in pop culture items like toys, games, cookie cutters, clothing, comics and movies.
The study will be published in the Journal of Geoscience Education.
ANI
