Re: T. rex eating habits

[cnedin@geology.adelaide.edu.au (Chris Nedin)]

>From: LANGENBERGK@randb.abbott.com
 >
 > I have a question related to to "jaw power" question posted earlier.  My
 > 10-year-old asked me today:
 >
 >     Did T.rex eat things whole, bones and all?
 >
 > I told her I would ask the experts.

Dinosaur teeth are undifferentiated (i.e. unlike ours they are all the
same). T. rex teeth are peg-like with a sharpe ridge along the trailing
edge. Animals which crush and chew bones for a living (hyena's etc.) all
have adaptions, to increase the surface area of the teeth involved in
crushing and to protect the gums from damage by bone splinters (by having a
small shelf or raised ridge on the tooth where in meets the gum). The
construction of the T. rex tooth would not allow for active crushing of
large bone. It seems likely therefore, that T. rex would eat small animals
whole (the teeth are not very useful for chewing) but probably either
sheared meat off larger prey or possibly snapped large bones once and
swallowed. T. rex jaws often show an irregular tooth row, where the teeth
are of uneven size along the jaw. This is thought to be due, in part, to
the loss of teeth during feeding, which suggests that some sort of
tooth-bone interaction occurred fairly regularly.

Chris

cnedin@geology.adelaide.edu.au,   nedin@ediacara.org
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Many say it was a mistake to come down from the trees, some say
the move out of the oceans was a bad idea. Me, I say the stiffening
of the notochord in the Cambrian was where it all went wrong,
it was all downhill from there.