T-Rex (Up-to-Date Version)

Artist: Lawrence Lin

The Tyrannosaurus Rex has been a favorite of the public the longest time. Although the Jurassic Park T-rex was extremely accurate for the time, almost 22 years has passed since the movie was released. We have found that it was much more bulky than previously thought. Dinosaurs in the past have been represented as "shrink wrapped," which is how paleoartists draw dinosaurs when they don't exactly know what the exterior of the dinosaur looks like and draw the creature with less flesh than reality. So is T-Rex. Compare my up-to-date version above with the shrink wrapped T-rex from Jurassic Park: do you spot the difference? 

Another discovery that has been made recently is lipped Tyrannosaurids. A close relative to the T-rex, the tooth of Daspletosaurus (a type of Tyrannosaurid) was split open to observe the degradation within it, which paleontologists found very little, suggesting that it wasn't exposed to dry air. This proved that the Daspletosaurus, and very likely other Tyrannosaurids, including the T-rex, also had lips. In my depiction of the T-rex (bottom left), you can notice that the teeth are covered with lips.