Despite being arguably the most imposing creature to ever walk the earth, T. rex wasn’t always intimidating. Rather than stomp around as it does in Jurassic Park, for instance, the “lizard tyrant” (as the name translates to) ran on its tiptoes. This birdlike movement “would have been something like an 8-ton chicken clucking about in the barnyard,” Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, told The New York Times. This makes sense, given that birds are descended from dinosaurs, but it still doesn’t square with our typical image of the apex predator.

“Seeing how these dinosaurs move is part of the same evolutionary story as how birds began running around on the ground,” said Adrian Boeye, also to the Times, who led the study that made these findings in February 2026. T. rex could weigh more than 10 tons, so its gait and movement have long been of interest to researchers. Boeye and his colleagues examined fossilized footprints and the lower leg anatomy in their study, determining that T. rex used short, fast strides to cover distances of up to 37 feet per second — somehow even more terrifying than if it had lumbered about the way most of us assumed it did.