Re: [dinosaur] Fwd: Re: T. rex hunting Alamosaurus

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

A 6 -10 tonne adult tyrannosaur likely wasn't agile enough to avoid a 
well-placed kick, tail slap or neck 
bump from an adult sauropod either. 

The sauropod would not only have the advantage of mass, but also of stability 
(four legs verses two). A 
non-fatal glancing blow from a tyrannosaur would be unlikely to knock a large 
sauropod over (or even faze 
it much), whereas a glancing blow from a large adult sauropod could completely 
topple a multi-tonne 
biped, resulting in an incapacitating injury that might ultimately prove fatal 
to the predator.

Even if tyrannosaurs attacked as a group, with younger and more agile members 
harrying the adult 
sauropod to exhaustion until the adult tyrannosaurs dared to approach to finish 
the prey off, there would 
still have been the problem of separating the sauropod from its herd members 
first. Otherwise the 
tyrannosaur group would lose their numerical advantage. A sauropod that was 
already sick or injured in 
some way might lag behind the herd and become vulnerable to such a coordinated 
attack, however a 
health adult sauropod accompanied by other healthy adult individuals would 
likely have been all but 
immune to predation.

--
Dann Pigdon


On Mon, Jul 1st, 2019 at 5:02 PM, Poekilopleuron <dinosaurtom2015@seznam.cz> 
wrote:

> 
> Yes, that sounds reasonable. But what if T. rex was just too hungry to wait
> any longer? Perhaps its mighty jaws could speed that process up a little. 
> After all, 50+ tonne alamosaurs weren´t agile enough to avoid a well-placed
> bite? Tom

>> If I was a tyrannosaur, I'd follow the herd around until something else 
>> brought an adult down for me (disease,
>> injury, old age, etc). Such an event would have been the land-based
>> equivalent of a whale fall.
>> 
>> --
>> Dann Pigdon