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RE: Microraptor also ate fish
>None of what you said makes predation of the fish more parsimonious. To be
>so, it would have to explain the data better than scavenging, and you admit in
>the last paragraph scavenging fish requires no special morphology for a
>theropod. So hunting fits its morphology well, and scavenging fits its
>morphology well. <
If an animal has the tools to catch live fish, predation is a much reliable
method of obtaining a given quantity of food than scavenging, special
conditions like anoxic events excepted.
It follows that when an animal which clearly has the tools for predation is
found with prey-appropriate organisms in it's gut, predation is parsimonious -
predation being ecologically more viable.