Male Tyrannosaurus rex 2.0

At last, my updated, practically completely redrawn version of the original. The old one was drawn quickly with few refrerences, but for this one I did a bunch of research for first. The shape of the head is based on several sources from photos of the AMNH 5027 skull to drawings by Tracy Ford, Jaime Headden and Scott Hartman. Most of the integument is largely based on the Carr et al. 2017 Daspletosaurus paper, but is highly speculative. The paper in question is unfortunately very light on the details when it comes to the supposed dermal structures, so it's unclear to what extent their conclusions can be applied to Tyrannosaurus (or even Daspletosaurus for that matter). Hopefully we'll get a more detailed paper focused on the facial soft tissue of tyrannosaurs in the future to clear things out.

I have also added speculative dermal structures on the snout based on a curious feature in older Tyrannosaurus rex maxillae that might may indicate the presence of some kind of display structure(s). I chose to interpret it as thickly cornified skin with lighter raised ridges and shallower darker areas. This could have acted as an indication of mature age for prospective mates, similar to the gray hairs of a silverback gorilla. In addition to this the animal also has a number of scars in the upper and lower jaw from facial biting by another T. rex, either from interspecies combat or particulary rough love - or both. Due to the resulting look I like to call this older gentleman "Gnarly rex".

If you find it curious that my rex has lips, see The lipless rex experiment for more details.