Re: The absurdity, the absurdity (was: Cooperating theropods?)

[Chris Campbell <sankarah@ou.edu>]

Larry Dunn wrote:
> 
> sankarah wrote:
> 
> >> No, _not_ the same.  Chris, you're arguing in generalities.  Just
> look at the animals, OK?
> >
> >Yes, I am arguing in generalities, because dromaeosaurs differ from
> >modern predators in even the most general means imaginable.  Compared
> >to a dromaeosaur, cats and dogs have an awful lot in common -- that 
> >was my only point.
> 
> So: They were different from, say. cats and dogs in even the most
> general means imaginable.  Therefore they hunted in packs,  just as so
> many felids and canids do?

Are you a lawyer or something?  You seem to enjoy twisting words.  Once
again: lots of animals work cooperatively.  Very few animals strangle
their prey.  Dogs and cats do.  Dogs and cats have strategies revolving
around this.  If you have a different method of dispatching your prey
you'll have a different strategy to go with it.  Nothing's stopping you,
however, from working together just like everything from ants to sharks
to naked mole rats.  
 
> >Which, again, is why I said "perhaps" and "might".  We don't know, and
> >that means theories of pack hunting and preferred prey should not be
> >dismissed out of turn because we can't find a modern analog.  We simply
> >have no idea.
> 
> But we do have an idea.  We do have modern pack hunters, and
> dromaeosaurs, as you point out, are nothing like them.  

Which means we shouldn't say Dromies couldn't hunt in packs because they
couldn't do what modern pack hunters do.  They can operate in packs in a
different manner.  

>We do have good evidence of the possible true usage of the sickle 
>claw, from a fossilized animal pair (probably: repeated piercing 
>of the neck around the carotids), 

I'd really like to know how you expect the dromie to do this without
getting severely bitten.  Even a Tenontosaur could probably give a nasty
bite if you stick your arm or neck in its mouth (which you'd pretty much
have to for this approach to work).  A ceratopian would just bite the
arm or neck in half.  This would be a very dangerous strategy.

>which evidence you have "dismissed out of turn" as a
>silly velociraptor who just wasn't thinking.

Mainly because the Protoceratops in question was in the process of
giving as good as he got.  Them's bad odds for a predator, and that
strategy would like as not get the attacker killed.  So yeah, I dismiss
it; it has to have a reasonable chance of success before we can assume
it's that standard MO.
 
> (Let's keep in mind that we're not discussing "theories" here -- this is
> all firmly in the realm of hypothesis.)

Of course.  Actually, I'd call it more speculation, myself.  
 
> Once again, you can't assert that the sickle claw means all bets are
> off, and then sit down with a fossil sickle claw in your hand and start
> hypothesizing about predation.  Why not?  Well, if all bets are off, if
> all analogies to extant animals are inapposite, then what on *earth* are
> you using to form your brave new assumptions?

Not much.  Just what seems physically possible, and what might work from
the viewpoint of evolutionary theory.  
Chris