Fw: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

In the case where the spine is in the 'anvil' between the jaws, I think the  
pneumaticized vertebrae would crushed and 'instant' incapacitation would result.

Otherwise, I doubt the neck is strong enough to support the weight of a large 
theropod, much less swing it around, if the hold is away from the shoulders. A 
good catchdog, using the leverage available in the relatively short bovine 
neck, can _routinely_  flip a running cow 20-25 times it's mass end-over-end. 
Risk to the dog exists, but is minimal.

Don

----- Original Message ----
From: Richard W. Travsky <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 12:04:40 PM
Subject: Re: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, don ohmes wrote:
> "..but looks like an unnecessary risk when the prey is twice as long and tall
> as the predator." --DM
>
> What is risky about reaching up and grabbing a sauropod by the neck, if 
> you match the physical description of a tyrannosaur? If your hold is 2m 
> behind the head, you are 8m away from the front feet. Even that assumes 
> no injury to the spine of the prey item, which would result in instant 
> incapacitation of the prey.
>
> It 'looks like' to me like you are characterizing prey/predator 
> interactions on the basis of sheer intuition, and are overly impressed 
> by simple size differential.

That neck is still capable of swinging around and some sort of violent 
motion should be expected in response. Depending on the size of the
sauropod, incapacitation would not seem like a given. In fact, it might
even hurt the predator.