THE T. REX PUMP COVER

T. rex was named in 1905 and mounted a decade after that — tail dragging on the floor, torso hauled up almost vertical, basically standing like a kangaroo that pulled something. That's how it stood in museums, textbooks, and every movie poster for most of the 20th century.

Turns out the tail was the problem the whole time. Early mounts treated it like dead weight dragging behind the animal. The skeleton disagreed. By the 1990s, CT scans and some actual biomechanics forced the correction: AN UPRIGHT, TAIL-DRAGGING GIANTBALANCED HORIZONTAL, TAIL AS COUNTERWEIGHT. That tail was never dragging. It was doing half the work of holding the animal up.

The teeth, at least, nobody ever got wrong. Serrated, self-sharpening, constantly replaced — they're the most common T. rex fossil there is, and the one part of this animal that's looked right since day one.