Re: T. REX THE HUNTER

["Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com>]

>Jaime Headden wrote:

<< A lumbering scavenger would also have not probably bitten a 
*Triceratops'* face as indicated by the specimen (don't know the number) 
that had *Tyrannosaurus* teeth embedded in the skull. Now, while we can 
think that no self-respecting T. rex would go after a living trike in 
the face, with those 3 foot horns (with keratin applied to them, 4.5 
feet) sticking forward and up, a possible retort would be what T. rex 
would go after a _dead_ trike's face, covered as it was by very little 
meat and a lot of tough skin and hide.>>

<IS there any way of telling what direction the bite came from on this 
trike specimen, forward or behind?>

Assuming the Rex was running alongside the trike, the teeth would have 
bit down in and back. The puncture wounds were forward-facing, not 
lateral, as I assume would mean a bite encompassing the snout (from the 
front, in other words).

The skull of an *Anchiceratops* has a large hole in the side of the 
frill beside the left fenestrum. I assume this was an accident, not 
pathological, and the hole in the *Triceratops hatcheri* skull is also 
remarkable in this way, but considering the size of the extant 
predators/scavengers, we can assume that the possibility of a Rex 
involved in the kill (or meal) is highly probably.

Oh, and there's the trike pelvis with Rex teeth imbedded in it, but that 
is posed as having one's thigh ripped off, and this is possible with the 
proposed lunch living or dead.

<< And just in case anyone's wondering, hyenas are more likely to hunt 
down prey than lions, and are more effective at it, as well, with their 
"scavenger" bodies (huge, bone crushing teeth, strong jaws, powerful 
neck, forward torso enlarged and strengthed to anchor the neck, and hind 
limbs well-built to power the whole body). If a hyena were the size of a 
lion, the former would win out in almost any battle the two might 
possibly have, exclusively because the hyena is better built to kill, 
not scavenge. Lions rely on precise applications of their otherwise 
slender, delicate canines to pierce flesh in the region of the backbone, 
otherwise they hang on and attempt to weary the prey down till they 
start feeding---mostly when the unfortunate zebra's still alive.>>

<A couple of misconceptions here. Lions and hyenas are always 
competitors for the top predator slot. One usually kills, the other 
usually scavenges -- but depending on where you go in Africa, either 
species might fill either role. In some areas, the hyenas do most of the 
killing and the lions scavenge. In other areas, the lions do most of the 
killing and the hyenas scavenge. In still other areas, both lions and 
hyenas kill, and both will scavenge given a chance. There's no known 
modern large carnivore that is a pure scavenger, yes, but on the other 
hand there's only one modern large carnivore that will never scavenge, 
and that may be more a matter of necessity than preference.>

Ngorongoro Crater is famous for its lack of hyenas, thus lions are top. 
Hyenas, when lacking lions, will kill and so will jackals, I assure you, 
to the point that they excell in fields where lions are usually prime, 
and exceed the lion standard.

<No cheetah has ever been observed to scavenge another animal's kill, 
but then cheetahs are not the bravest of cats, and dead animals in 
Africa are usually covered by other scavengers within minutes.>

I have seen footage of a cheetah (a male) chase off a hungry female with 
cubs after she'd brought down a gazelle.

<Point is, evolving as a hunter doesn't exclude scavenging as a 
secondary or even primary method of finding food.>

Oh, yes. I agree. I have never abdicated the notion of scavenging. I 
most certainly agree that large theropods could (and did) scavenge; and 
even small ones, for that matter.

<Personally, I have trouble believing that anything as big as T. rex 
could find enough food to keep itself going _exclusively_ by scavenging, 
unless there were an _awful_ lot of dead dinosaurs around, due either to 
frequent disease or to another predator that had a habit of leaving 
partial carcasses in its wake. That's just an opinion, obviously, but 
it's all I've got til somebody produces better evidence one way or the 
other.>

Jaime A. Headden

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