Re: Suchomimus tenerensis

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Caleb Lewis wrote:

<I personally have my doubts about the statement saying that it was a
fish-eater. Well, that's a pretty big dinosaur to be eating fish. I
mean, would a dinosaur that big have evolved to eat fish?>

  Comparison of the predator's size to the prey should not be held
with too much weight. Take, for instance, the basking shark and baleen
whales, whose prey are about a million times smaller then they are. Of
course, quantity makes up for size, so they eat _lots_ of that stuff.
Pretty big lungfish in Africa in those days (Sereno et al, in my
opinion, should have expanded the article in _Science_, but there were
size considerations -- no pun intended: better geological intra- and
interfaunal and -floral data, better details on the other taxa
mentioned [If a specimen is complete enough to be called an "azdarchid
pterosaur", it's good enough to mention something about it! :)] and
some better skeletal diagrams, like what was done for
*Carcharodontosaurus* in Sereno et al. (1996). That, I think, is the
one problem with the Sereno's articles: to brief.

----

  In regards to the terrestrial predator hypothesis, it's entirely too
possibly, as others have mentioned, and the narrowness of the jaws
would be hardly a problem for it. Go after those small ornithopods
instead of *Ouranosaurus* (if it was co-habitant (ie, lived at the
same place, same time)) and there would be hardly a problem of killing
that creature in a single lunging snap to the back or neck. The
narrowness works something like a plank of wood, or similar to an
I-beam: you hit something with the wide end, it's more likely to snap
than if you were to hit it with the narrow end, the edge of the jaw,
which is where the teeth are. Break it's back, neck, or pierce the
skull and cause brain-death in seconds. Grab it by the tail or leg and
cause serious lacerating wounds (gashes and deep slices) that makes
the animal bleed to death. Hamstring it! Lions trip their prey, as do
Cape hunting dogs [They're quadrupeds with no piscivorous adaptations,
I know].

  As for those claws, who knows?

  Jaime
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