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On page 264 of The Dinosaur Heresies is the
observation:
"A fully adult Ceratosaurus's skull,
nearly three feet long in life, was not one tight mass of bones and teeth; it
consisted of a loose kit of thin bony struts, flexible bony sheets regularly
perforated by holes, ball-in-socket joints, and sliding articulations, the whole
bound together with ligaments." And on the next page "There was a strong
central core in the heads of the predatory dinosaurs: their thick-walled
braincase...The primary function of the dinosaur's 'braincase' was to provide
attachment sites for the neck muscles and to serve as the foundation point for
all the thinner, more flexible components of the snout, palate, and roof of the
skull."
(The "," before the "and" is worthy.) This
discussion was just after a description of a Coelophysis nimbly killing
an anchisaur by small wounds. It seems that
an animal with such a light and comparatively fragile skull would have to
use other approaches besides biting.
Fastovsky and Weishampel note (Evolution and
Extinction of the Dinosaurs, p. 283) "Still, because of the well-rounded
occipital condyle and its articulation with the first part of the cervical
vertebrae, it is thought that the skull had considerable mobility on the
neck. So, too, did many of the joints of the skull with each
other. Their appearance of mobility, however, may be an illusion; instead,
they may have been constructed in such a fashion to lessen or dissipate the
stresses passing through the skull as the animal bit, subdued, and dismembered
its struggling prey."
So, my question is, does this loosely connected
skull indicate that certain predatory dinosaurs (Bakker, though the term
seems to include tyrannosaurs, and that's strange; F & W title the section
from which the quote was taken Theropods as Living Organisms) were
incapable of using their heads as a main weapon in hunting, at least in hunting
sizable prey?
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