Really interesting article if you like dinosaurs and jurassic park.
Jurassic Park Lied to You: T-Rex Had Great Eyesight Really
Jurassic Park Lied to You: T-Rex Had Great Eyesight Really
The Tyrannous Rex not only could see just fine, whether the object was moving or non-moving (which helps one not run into things), there's also quite a bit of evidence that the T-Rex's sight was extremely good, very possibly better than modern-day hawks and eagles.
Stevens determined that a T-Rex's binocular range was 55 degrees, which is wider than even hawks. Stevens continued the research with other theropod dinosaurs and determined that most theropods had binocular ranges at least similar to modern raptorial birds (aka "birds of prey").
According to his findings, while admitting that these were best-case scenario determinations, the T-Rex may well have had visual clarity up to 13 times better than a modern human. For reference, an eagle has about 3.6 times the visual clarity of a person. Additionally, it was determined that a T-Rex's vision allowed an object to remain relatively clear up to six kilometers away. For humans, it's only about 1.6 kilometers for the same clarity. As Stevens put it, "With the size of its eyeballs, (the T-Rex) couldn't help but have excellent vision."
So, if that's the case, while a bit of a stretch, the question that can be asked is, "Was the statement made by Dr. Grant in the movie actually more about a frog's vision than a T-Rex's?" Digging a tad deeper, this quote from the movie by Dr. Grant gives us a clue to what species of frog they may have used:
They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog's. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment.
The most common West African frog that has a tendency to change gender is the African reed frog. These frogs see quite on par with other species of frogs with their horizontal pupils, though they cannot see in the red spectrum. Yes, it is documented that frogs have a hard time seeing prey that doesn't move, but not significantly so, such that they'd be blind to them. Plus, humans (and really, all other prey) do move even when they think they are standing still- breathing, trembling, involuntary jerks, this is all movement. Additionally, as Kent Stevens said in response to this moving myth question, "If you're sweating in fear one inch from the nostrils of the T. Rex, it would figure out you were there anyway."
Besides great vision, the T-Rex also had a great sense of smell (and had good hearing). In fact, their large olfactory bulbs and nerves relative to their brain size indicates they may have had a sense of smell about equivalent to modern vultures, which are able to smell dead things from as far away as a couple kilometers. So whether scavenging or hunting, the T-Rex was good at finding things to eat. That said, there is some debate as to just how fast they were, with most scientists today thinking they had only a max speed of about 17-25 mph. That would have made the jeep chasing scene quite a bit less dramatic.
