REX
  
WRECKS
 


The huge North American Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived around 70 million years ago. The largest were an estimated 39 ft (12 m) in total length and weighed around 10 tons. They had an elongated skull and large, spike-shaped teeth in jaws that could open to a 4-ft (122-cm) gape. The short forelimbs had two fingers armed, like the three digits of the powerful hind limbs, with sharp, curved claws; on the foot was a spurred toe not reaching to the ground.

A ferocious terrestrial carnivore, T. rex is believed to have existed only for a short time in the late Cretaceous period and to have dominated the North American continent at that time; fossil remains have been found in the W United States.

  
In 1769, the very first self-propelled road vehicle was a military tractor invented by French engineer and mechanic, Nicolas Joseph Cugnot (1725 - 1804). Cugnot used a steam engine to power his vehicle, built under his instructions at the Paris Arsenal by mechanic Brezin. It was used by the French Army to haul artillery at a whopping speed of 2 1/2 mph on only three wheels. The vehicle had to stop every ten to fifteen minutes to build up steam power.

In 1771, Cugnot drove one of his road vehicles into a stone wall, making Cugnot the first person to get into a motor vehicle accident. This was the beginning of bad luck for the inventor. After one of Cugnot's patrons died and the other was exiled, the money for Cugnot's road vehicle experiments ended.

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