The world’s biggest tyrannosaurus rex is believed to have weighed 9.8 tons, or 19,500 lbs.

Once the question, ”so, how do you even weigh a dinosaur” is addressed, the second natural question to ask is “how could their bones support such a massive load?”

New research recently published in PLOS ONE addresses the latter. A multidisciplinary team of paleontologists, mechanical engineers, and biomedical engineers from University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Colorado State University, and Southern Methodist University found that the trabecular bone structure of several “duck-billed” dinosaurs is highly specialized in supporting such large weights.

“Unlike in mammals and birds, the trabecular bone does not increase in thickness as the body size of dinosaurs increase. "Instead it increases in density of the occurrence of spongy bone. Without this weight-saving adaptation, the skeletal structure…would be so heavy, [causing them] great difficulty moving.

- Anthony Fiorillo, SMU Paleontologist

Trabecular bone, or spongy bone, is very porous and useful in transferring large mechanical loads.

The study goes on to quantify the bone via CT scans and via FEM imaging to determine how the architecture changes with body mass. The authors rationalize that their findings “have "potential implications for novel bioinspired designs of stiff and lightweight structures.”

You can read more about their findings in this CNN featured article here.