Quote from: xeno-kaname on Nov 29, 2014, 05:46:21 PM
Quote from: Vertigo on Nov 29, 2014, 10:46:18 AM
99% sure, personally. The scars are in the right spot, the head shape's the same, and unlike the Lost World rexes, it has the same colour scheme.
I know the movies didn't mention life spans do they can get away with it, but by book standards it shouldn't have lasted this long no? I'm fine with them taking this liberty though I'm just curious. Glad she's back 
Well the whole question of JP dinosaur lifespans is murky, I don't remember it being addressed in the book or film. In real life, Tyrannosaurus grew up at a similar rate to us, reaching full size in their mid-teens, and I'm pretty sure InGen weren't supposed to have cloned a dinosaur in the 1970s. I dimly remember reading somewhere that JP's bigger dinosaurs were supposed to reach maturity in around 5 years, I don't know if this was based on now-outdated research (as with most of JP1's errors) or if their growth rates were artificially accelerated.
Anyway. The oldest known Tyrannosaurus died at 28, but had been surviving with numerous crippling injuries, so could potentially have lived a lot longer. Tyrannosaurs lived horrifyingly stressful lives, reasonably-complete specimens are typically riddled with deep injuries and infection sites.
So, if you had a solitary animal living in captivity, being fed goats, the upper limit for their lifespan could have been vastly longer. I tried working out an estimate a few years back, using big cats as a reference (which similarly lead brutal lives in the wild), and figured they'd probably have an upper range in the 40s.
...I'm getting sidetracked again. Ok, five second Google search, movie-canon-wise InGen was founded in the '80s, putting Tyrannosaurus at 3-13 years old in the movie. This makes it 25-35 in JW.
