How Fast Did T-Rex Run?  Unsolved Questions from the Frontiers of Dinosaur Science
By David Hone
Princeton University Press, 2022

For any reader of paleontologist David Hone’s new book, imagining themselves in Cretaceous-era Billings, Montana 68 million years ago, the answer to “how fast did T. Rex run” will be “too fast.” These creatures, the apex of terrestrial predatory dinosaur evolution, weighed seven tons, were as long as a city bus, and, according to Hone, had “a literal bone-crushing bite.” All of which invariably makes for fun cinema, but it wouldn’t have been much fun in real life for a naked, waddling little primate running from one of these 12-foot monsters. 

It’s all good meaty smart fun in the pages of “How Fast Did T-Rex Run,” although Hone somewhat underestimates himself with his subtitle, “Unsolved Questions from the Frontiers of Dinosaur Science.” Hone is an extremely engaging expert at taking the arcana of minuscule bone-scratches, slightly irregular soil deposits, and microscopic fracture-traces and turning them into American Museum of Natural History dioramas of vibrancy and violence – there are precious few unsolved questions in these pages, and even on the ones that still stand, readers will feel completely comfortable taking Hone’s best guesses as likely right.

Of course, because the book’s title question has a two-digit number as its answer, Hone has to cover a good deal more dinosaur-related stuff to reach his 200 pages. In addition to a thumbnail sketch of how dinosaur fossils were first discovered, readers learn the latest thinking on a wide variety of subjects, from what dinosaurs ate, how they really looked, how they reproduced, and even, given the bird-like pneumatic nature of their bones, how much they weighed. “It’s not uncommon to see Tyrannosaurus rex being reported as being anything from about 3 to 7 tons at adult size,” Hone writes. “Mass goes up quickly, even when you scale things up only a little, because it’s increasing in all three dimensions, so something that is twice as long will be eight times heavier, since it’s also twice as wide and twice as tall.” 

Like most popular science books these days, unfortunately, this one indulges in board-stiff dad-humor section-titles like “Bird brained?” “Let There Be More Light,” and “Cue Barry White.” But even these leaden pellets (why are they here? Who are they supposed to placate or entice?) can’t do more than scratch the brainy fun on offer in these pages. Every book season has its share of dinosaur books, and in this season, this is one of the best. 

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He writes regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor. He’s a books columnist for the Bedford Times Press and the Books editor of Big Canoe News in Georgia, and his website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.