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

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

On Tue, Jul 2nd, 2019 at 9:59 AM, Gregory Paul <gsp1954@aol.com> wrote:

> A lot of this discussion is iffy. 

All discussions about the behaviour of long-extinct creatures are iffy. That's 
part of their charm. :-)

> Large predators do attack large healthy adult prey fairly often. 

We have no modern analogues for sauropod-sized land-based herbivores, or 
multi-tonne bipedal 
predators, so it's difficult to extrapolate modern observable behaviour to 
cover this particular hunting 
scenario. 

One interesting thought experiment might be to calculate how many adult 
tyrannosaurs a single adult 
sauropod could have fed before the carcass decomposed too much to be edible. If 
it would have taken a 
ridiculous number of tyrannosaurs to fully utilise the prey (much more than 
could conceivably have formed 
a single group), then it may not have been worth the risk of hunting in the 
first place, as the tyrannosaurs 
could have been targeting smaller and less risky prey and getting the same 
benefit.

--
Dann Pigdon