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Re: Experts had thought only herbivores hunted in packs...


Michael,
I think you might be right that it may be premature to state that pack "hunting" is definitely indicated. But it does seem like very good evidence of sociality (pack "living", so to speak). Even if they were just scavenging, it looks like they were probably sharing resources.
If we are going to compare this with mammalian carnivores such as cats, it sounds more like a social pride of lions sharing resources whether scavenged, killed by a dominant adult, or killed by a cooperative groups of the adults. It doesn't sound like the more solitary kinds of cats, like jaguars or cheetahs.
But I do agree that it would require stronger evidence to specifically point to pack "hunting". I don't know in what context Currie may have discussed pack "hunting", but it does seem to be a possibility given the evidence of pack "living" (which is a broader concept of which pack "hunting" is just a subset).
-----Ken
******************************************************* 
From: "Michael A. Turton" <turton@ev1.net>
Reply-To: turton@ev1.net
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Re: Experts had thought only herbivores hunted in packs...
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 08:27:00 -0600

> it was pretty explicit about the point that
> this was a single-species, mixed-age assemblage, and presented that as a
> refutation of the flood-carried or tar trap scenarios and thus as the clincher
> for Currie's theory.
>
> Alan

I just don't buy it as evidence of cooperative hunting. Cooperative hunters
spread out. Cooperative ambushers drive the prey in the direction of
the other animal, often on the other side of the target herd. They aren't all
bunched up
-- it would defeat the whole purpose of working together. It seems more likely
that this assemblage occurred for some other reason (like coincidently scavenging
the same carcass), and they all wound up dead in one place together for reasons
unrelated to hunting.

Michael Turton

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