Fans of the 1993 film Jurassic Park (and it is hard to conceive of anyone who wouldn't be a fan) will recall the unease suffered by those characters who were present when the Tyrannosaurus rex escaped from its paddock. In that scene, paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant recommends that everyone freeze for the reason that a T-Rex could only detect motion and not still objects (frogs and toads today pretty much operate under the same constraints).
About the same time that the movie was being released, University of Oregon professor Dr. Kent Stevens performed various experiments to determine the visual acuity of a Tyrannosaur. Only mildly inconvenienced by the fact that the dinosaur had been extinct for about 65 million years, Stevens used various computer projections, models of skulls, trigonometry, and extrapolations from what living creatures could see to make an estimate on the veracity of Dr. Grant's assertion.
Dr. Grant apparently got it wrong. Using best-case projections, the T-Rex had a binocular range and depth perception even better than modern hawks and would have easily been able to distinguish various objects--moving or not. This carnosaur could have had visual clarity 13 times as good as a human (an eagle has visual clarity only 3.6 times as good as a person). The T-Rex could clearly view an object 6 kilometers away, while a human could not do so for the same object past 1.6 kilometers. In other words, the recommendation of Dr. Grant that humans standing in front of a Tyrannosaurus should merely freeze is about as reliable as the promises of a U.S. Presidential candidate in an election year.
The T-Rex also probably had a sense of smell as acute as a turkey vulture, which can sniff dinner from a couple of kilometers away. The giant reptile could also probably run between 15 to 25 MPH (24 to 40 KPH).
In short, if you are with other folks in the presence of a unfettered Tyrannosaurus rex and you do not have with you a S&W Model 500 revolver, you should all take off in totally different directions in the hope that at least one of you will have time to hide while the creature is masticating upon your companions. You should probably also not follow the example of Claire in Jurassic World (a 2016 sequel to the original 1993 movie), who intentionally released a Tyrannosaurus so that it could chase her on foot for a quarter of a mile to an area where it would hopefully encounter and battle the "bad" dinosaur which was the chief reptilian antagonist in the film.
For more information on Dr. Stevens's work, click on the Today I Found Out website here.
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