RE: KICKING HADROSAURS

[Rich Travsky <rtravsky@UWYO.EDU>]

On Wed, 14 May 1997, Brian Franczak wrote:
> Stan Friesen wrote:
> > And I rather suspect that hadrosaurs had a pretty mean kick.
> Hmm... I'm not so sure about this. It seems to me that kicking as a defense
> will only work if the predator is *directly* behind its prey. Extant prey
> animals that kick (zebra, etc.) to defend themselves in the chase do so by
> kicking *straight back*, the predator being right on their tail. In
> hadrosaurs, the tail is the problem (for the predator). They cannot be
> approached from directly behind because there is a *huge* ungainly tail
> blocking that angle of attack.

I had envisioned this kick as a forward facing kisk, not a rearward 
kick. A bipedal hadrosaur could stand on one leg and lash out with
the other.

Or at least that's how I'd do it if I were a hadrosaur. (A soon to be
dead hadrosaur...)

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