Re: When carnivores kill other carnivores... (Morrison movie questions)

[Karen Casino <kcasino@comcast.net>]

Hey, all!

For those of you who don't know, I'm doing research for a script I'm 
writing. This subject line plays right into some questions that I have 
about this kind of situation. I have a scene (previously set as a 
sauropod stampede, which notion Dr. Carpenter kindly euthanized) 
involving large amounts of carrion in the environment preserved in the 
Morrison formation.

My questions are:

1) Is Saurophaganax a distinct species, or is it just a very large 
Allosaur of another species? (And under what circumstances do you 
capitalize the name of a species?)

2) Huh. So there's a giant Ceratosaurus in the Morrison formation. 
Would it get to be as large as the one that seems to have been present 
in the Tendaguru? (And for that matter, how reasonable would it be to 
use species from the Tendaguru formation in a Morrison setting?)

3) At this point, is it possible to reconstruct Torvosaurus with any 
degree of accuracy, and if so, where would I look for skeletal 
diagrams, etc?

4) How reasonable is it to use Acrocanthosaurus or a similar species in 
a Morrison setting?

The scene I have in mind involves the aftermath of a mass slaughter of 
Seismosaurs. (People are after the gastroliths. I'll have more 
questions on this subject.) Some thirty or forty animals have been 
killed, and the harvesting of the gastroliths has begun. Blood is on 
the wind, and the local predators are starting to swarm. One of the 
lead characters makes use of the presence of the predators to conduct 
an assault on the folks who slaughtered the Seismosaurs. If anyone has 
any ideas at all about this scenario, I'd be happy to steal from you. 
I'd like to be able to include some of the lesser known species like 
Torvosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus just for giggles, and since both of 
those species appear to be able to, uh, defeat an Allosaurus of 
comparable dimensions in combat they have particular appeal.

Yours,

Sean Craven (Karen Casino is the missus. We share an email account...)