A close-up study of a Tyrannosaurus rex head, drawn in fine detail: pebbled scales, a deep eye socket and a full set of curved teeth. The dense texture makes this a page for patient hands rather than small children, and it rewards slow shading with coloured pencils. Download and print the PDF free — no registration required.
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Tyrannosaurus is a favourite with children — are there dinosaur fans among your children or grandchildren?
Have you ever seen the film Jurassic Park?
How would it feel to stand in front of an animal like this one?
Have you ever seen a mounted dinosaur skeleton at a museum?
Why is the skin in this drawing scaly rather than feathered?
Because that is what the direct evidence from Tyrannosaurus itself shows. Skin impressions found with Tyrannosaurus specimens preserve small, pebbly scales rather than feathers. Close relatives such as Yutyrannus are known from feathered fossils, so many researchers think feathers were present somewhere in the family — perhaps on young animals — but that is still argued over. An artist drawing a scaly adult is following the fossils we actually have.
Why are the arms so short?
Nobody is certain. They are short only in proportion — each arm was still about the length of a grown person’s, with heavy muscle attachments on the bone. The usual explanation is that as the skull and jaws became the animal’s main weapon, the forelimbs had less work left to do. Other suggestions (helping the animal rise from the ground, or holding on to a mate) have been put forward, and none of them is settled.
How do artists know what a T. rex face looked like?
From the skull. The bone surface carries the marks of blood vessels and nerves, the sockets show how the teeth sat in the jaw, and the large openings show where the jaw muscles anchored. Everything outside the bone — how far scaly lips covered the teeth, how thick the skin was, what colour the animal was — is reconstruction, and it keeps changing as new specimens are found. That is worth remembering when you choose your colours: no one can tell you that you got it wrong.
