Re: Sauropod Musings

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

I've also often wondered if the larger carnivorous dinosaurs were
solitairy when they reached a particularily massive weight for this
reason.  

However there is nothing to keep juveniles below a certain weight from
herding.  Particularily as a defense against predation until a nice,
safe mass was reached.  So the gene pool would spread throughout an area
while in a more compact and energy efficient form till an adult weight
was reached and an adult territory was staked out for breeding purposes.

It ties in to an older idea I had about T rexes in particular, where the
juveniles hatched together would hang out as a pack in order to best
compete against older T rexes (mom probably) and as smaller, more energy
efficient juveniles they could cover more ground (than Mom), and then
when a certain size was reached the few that survive to this point
become solitairy, territorial, and probably also reach breeding maturity
at this time.

of course this is all rampant speculation on my part.......

-Betty Cunningham

John Bois wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Rob Meyerson wrote:
>  > I propose that sauropods travelled alone (or perhaps a mother/baby
> unit) and that the big ones were relatively rare.  I suggest that the
> young had a low survival rate, but the adults were pretty safe from all
> predators, just as an adult elephant is safe from all modern predators,
> except us of course.
> 
> Elephants have one baby at a time.  This was almost certainly not true of
> sauropods.  I agree that the young had likely a very high mortality rate
> and that once an individual reached a certain size they were practically
> immune, themselves, from predation.  An open question is how much aid they
> could provide to their juveniles.  Certainly not as much as elephants, I
> would guess.  One more thing: animals above 1000kg. today are limited by
> food not predation.  This supports your non-herding idea for sauropods.
> However, predation on sauropods at different life stages was likely much
> more intense than that upon elephants.