Re: Stegosaur plates as protection......

[Randy King <randyk@informix.com>]

A few animals may attack through the back, but most will attack the
soft vital organs; this is usually either the throat or the abdomen.
Animals with defenses based on the back tend to be smaller and can
protect their stomach and throat through other means, like the
armadillo or porcupine.  Otherwise, I think the soft areas are more
important to protect.  

Perhaps this is different for a therapod; though, that has the strength 
to crush through the bones.  But that still assumes that the giant 
therapods were the primary threat to teh stegasaur. This almost feels 
like a circular argument to me: If the stegasaur was only preyed upon
by therapods, he would develop a therapod defense; the therapods would
go after easier prey; the stegasaur would lose the genetically costly
defense.  

Ok, Maybe my defense is full of holes, come and get me; I'll learn
something.  :)

-Randy 'Speculation right back at ya' King

Sean Connell wrote:
> 
> I see their (stegosaurus at least)plates as very effective defensive
> structures.Think about it.If your a large theropod attacking your prey
> what would be the most effective strike? The spinal column.If your going
> after a large dangerous herbivore with a really nasty anti-pred weapon
> you need to disable or kill the beastie as quickly as possible. The
> spine is the obvious choice for this.Relatively little damage and the
> prey is effectively "out of it".If stegos weren't blessed with these
> plates then contemporary preds would have it much easier when it came to
> attacking them.I have seen some postings here regarding how fragile the
> plates were but that isn't really the point as I see it.Claws aren't as
> effective at puncturing and slashing bones as strong jaws ( look at the
> extant felids and thier attacks). To really inflict trauma to a spinal
> column it's helpful to have strong jaws and teeth.Oh well, to get across
> quickly what I'm trying to get at here's a picture.---You're a
> theropod.You come against a prey animal with a tail weapon.Whether your
> an allosaur type "grapple-bite" or tyrannosaur type "pursuit and
> BITE",pred the least suicidal approach is to would to inflict trauma to
> the spine.You attack and do so relatively quickly, thus taking down an
> otherwise dangerous meal.--Scene (2)...You move to attack the spinal
> column but instead of a bare target that you can easily wrap your jaws
> around, you encounter these tall plates.These plates pose some
> problems.You can bite through the plates, THEN attack the back. BUT,
> this takes precious time.Instead of one fluid fast attack ,you now must
> get the plate/plates out of the way.While your doing all this you are
> very close to an animal that approaches your mass at least,and that has
> a weapon capable of at least injuring you.That's all it takes.Usually a
> predator with ANY injury that slows it down during a subsequent attack
> will perish.I'll trail off here because of exhaustion but I hope
> somebody understands what I'm saying.>G<......Speculation as usual,Sean
> C.

-- 
**********************

My other job is dictator/kamikaze pilot.

Marc: http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~hansb/d.chessvar/makerule.html