Like looking at the rings of a tree to determine events in the tree’s life, Erickson and other researchers have determined they are able to inspect the age and information about organisms using the same process.
Just by looking at layers in teeth. Erickson told the Washington Post in 2017: “You can basically just count those up and figure out how long it took dentition to form. Dentition is the arrangement or condition of teeth in a particular species, and it should help determine life cycles.
Today Erickson is a professor of anatomy and vertebrate paleobiology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. His expertise in paleontology, engineering, anatomy, and zoology has led to him studying teeth and bones.
His research has led to questions about growth rates, feeding ecology, and biomechanics both in extinct and living reptiles. Thanks to his work, he co-discovered the approximate bite force of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex: a whopping 3,629 kilograms, which is similar to having three small cars land on you. Ouch.
Erickson has received numerous awards for both his research and his teaching. He's been in more than 135 science documentaries and has even hosted the National Geographic Channel series “Hunter & Hunted”.
The series focuses on human interactions with predatory animals. But perhaps his most incredible achievement has to do with teeth, eggs, and embryos.
When Erickson was a kid, he would help his father, a wildlife biologist and regional director for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, catch bears. Yes, you read that right.
His dad taught him to age them using cementum rings in their teeth. He would also catch salmon, and age them from the otoliths – their ear bones. When he entered the paleontology field, Erickson found out that not much work had been done using bone ages.
He set out to introduce his childhood technique to the world of dinosaurs and started determining the age of dinosaur skeletons. Skeletons like the famous Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the Field Museum of Chicago.
Using growth lines in the skeleton, he found something nobody had thought possible since T-Rex bones grow hollow as they age. Erickson was able to find some bones with intact growth lines – Sue apparently perished at the age of twenty-eight.