How to eat your lunch

["Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com>]

  We've all heard the pack-hunter theories for *Deinonychus*. We've all 
heard the reposte to the pack-hunter theories for *Deinonychus*. Both 
sides offer analogies, and make some great points. I will not illustrate 
these points as detailed as they've gotten recently.

  The association of a certain dromie with a certain ornithopod aside, 
I'll take you all to the Serengeti for a moment: Cheetahs (to revive 
briefly an analogy) will hunt in groups. Not pack hunting, per se, but 
true cooperative hunting, apart from the one animal hunting, while the 
second one helps to finish off the job. We're talking about two animals 
setting out together, side by side, chasing down the lunch, and both 
cooperatively keeping the prospective food from getting away by running 
aside. This had the advantage of keeping energies at lower expense when 
bringing down lunch, so feeding could commence sooner, than a single 
cheetah having to switch directions to chase down a, say, gazelle, when 
it went down a side track. Much more effective to use a pair, and the 
cheetahs, I assume, who normally hunt alone, knew it. The pair in 
question succeeded, and were related to each other (silbling-like).

  Now, it doesn't require any great intelligence to do this, and to 
realize that more than one animal is going to need to bring down prey 
that one animal may have greater difficulty doing. Cheetahs, while 
conceivably smarter than dromies (no proof, because aside from JP, we 
don't know the relative brains of dromies and should not hypothesize on 
this without some gosh-darned proof to back us up, like a endocranial 
cast of *Deinonychus*) often opt to multi-member hunting, i.e., 
cooperative hunting, as opposed to pack hunting.

  *Velociraptor* is a rare enough dino in beds that abound in protos and 
oviraptors. This is actually more analogous to cheetah/gazelle hunting 
than dromies, so I'll one-down myself.

  Next, we see a severe grouping of Clovery *Deinonychus* / 
*Tenontosaurus* pairings, with relatively few associations independant 
of them. Even if most of the specimens are teeth and frags of tenontos, 
what does this suggest? That *Deinonychus* liked to shed teeth near 
*Tenontosaurus* carcasses? or that the dromies liked to feed on or near 
the carcasses? or that the dromies killed the carcasses (in any way!)?

  The *Tenontosaurus* seem to be in more complete articulation than the 
*Deinonychus* associated, with the majority being teeth found nearby. 
What does this suggest? That the tenontosaur was fed upon very soon 
after death? or that the carcass laid about a while, in an area 
susceptible to large aquatic events (floods, heavy rains [causing 
floods], rivers overflowing their banks, watershed emptyings, upland 
drifting to lowland during spring snowmelt) which was then scavenged? or 
the dromies scavenged upon tenontos after chasing off the other 
predators (like *Acrocanthosaurus*? Unlikely, but think of sparrows 
attacking crows...)?

  Now what do we get? A lot of ideas, very good ones, actually, that 
pretty much find ways to solve this particular mystery, if at different 
angles, and all of us have found good ways of hypothesizing that these 
things could be possible. Larry, Frank, and all the others have come up 
with good points, and good repostès.

  Now, a personal note: we must not instantly discount any one's 
theories. It would take analysis to figure how relevant it is to the 
issue at hand, and saying that any particular analysis won't work based 
on another analysis is rather downgrading. Larry's points are valid in 
cotradicting the packhunter idea, and in my mind gives good evidence to 
how they couldn't be such hunters. All the _cooperative_ ideas also 
serve to bellyflop the _pack_ ideas, to one degree or another, but this 
does not occlude the pack on basis of mammalian social orders, as 
opposed to the reptilian, piscean, protozoan, or avian social orders. 
Point is, an analyis doesn't prove anything---it simply disproves or 
backs up something else, and the analyses [mark the plural] that most 
agree with one another are the most likely. This appears to be the 
cooperative order, as I see the thread. Anyone of you can, of course, 
say otherwise.

Jaime A. Headden

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