Re: Tyrannosaurus "Scavenger vs. Predator" debate - Some questions for Dr. Jack Horner:

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com> wrote:

> In the published case, the Triceratops apparently lived long enough
> after the attack to have its horn bones to partially heal.  The
> attack failed.  An "almost kill" won't fill a T. rex's belly.

A couple of points I haven't seen anyone else make...  Point one,
let's start from the implicit assumptions Phil has been making about
_Tyrannosaurus_ hunting behavior.  The above could be absolutely correct,
and the student with the massive travel budget might show that in the
set of specimens of _Triceratops_ with bite marks on their horns, more
often than not the bite marks show signs of healing.  Such would
indicate that for a _Triceratops_, getting a tyrannosaur to grab your
horns would represent a winning move (irrespective of who started the
fight).

Point two, Phil has repeatedly made the claim that there is no upside
for a tyrannosaur grabbing the horn of a _Triceratops_.  Let's cast
aside the implicit assumption that Phil is making: that tyrannosaurs
hunted alone.  Now if *I* were going to try to get a bite through the
spine of a _Triceratops_, I sure would like it if one of my friends
were holding onto the horns to make sure *I* didn't have to worry
about them.  If tyrannosaurs cooperatively hunted, then you might
expect that most of the times that a tyrannosaur got hold of the horns
of a _Triceratops_, that animal's fate had been sealed, and the survey
of horn damage would come out the opposite of what's suggested above,
more often than not, bite marks would show no sign of healing.

Seems like a great thesis project because you could write it up
irrespective of the outcome of your examination provided that you
could find more than a few bite-marked horns and had some reasonable
way of inferring whether or not the animal survived the attack.

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@psych.ucsb.edu)