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Re: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?



(While we're mentioning "late-night thoughts"... I was asked if I'd mind explaining, and I answered "sure". That's not what I meant, obviously.)

> Tyrannosaurids don't look at all like specialized
> sauropod-hunters. From such an animal I'd expect the ability to
> make huge wounds in a short time and then retreat. This is what
> carnosaurs, especially carcharodontosaurids, look
> like. Tyrannosaurs were pursuit-and-bite predators.

That's an interesting perspective.  What features of allosauroids make
them more suited for wound-and-retreat than tyrannosaurs?

Their teeth and their skull biomechanics. Tyrannosaurs look more like they took time to place a bite in a convenient position and then thoroughly crunched their prey. This should kill or at least immobilize most animals up to the tyrannosaur's own size pretty quickly and with a high success rate, but looks like an unnecessary risk when the prey is twice as long and tall as the predator.


No arguments here!  I wish more of the recentish spate of WWD-like
dinosaur documentaries would show a theropod getting comprehensively
splattered by a sauropod.  The world needs more of that kind of thing.

=8-)