Do you have a reference for this? All of the ecology literature I am familiar with indicates that predation on healthy adults is quite rare. Hone and Rauhut (2010) did a nice job of summarizing these modern trends in the context of implications for theropod feeding, specifically, and they concluded that predation on adults was probably rare. It also seems like attacking adults would be rather odd given the sea of vulnerable, mostly unguarded juveniles. From a functional anatomy perspective, theropods donât really seem to have the traits that weâd expect from big prey specialists, either. Iâve noted this before on the list, and it seems to be a deeply unpopular notion for some reason, but I am so far unconvinced by the theropod super predator concept.
Yes, but the tyrannosaur might not have survived that attack. A major source of mortality for subadult predators in the modern world is poor prey choice leading to injury.
Also quite possible that it was merely passing that way and had no intention of trying its luck against something that could murder it easily. Itâs highly speculative either way. Though admittedly fun to consider! General point for this thread: The mechanical performance of large sauropods is chronically underestimated. The poor critters seem to be constantly reconstructed as super sluggish things that could barely move or react. But a kick, neck slam, or tail strike from a sauropod was probably reasonably fast and had a huge reach. I expect that most species were very dangerous when provoked. Cheers, âMBH
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