New Scientist Mag: Dinosaurs took tumbles while hunting

[Don Lamson <dlamson@iea.com>]

Dinosaurs took tumbles while hunting - magazine


            LONDON (Reuters) - Some big dinosaurs often tripped and
broke their ribs while chasing their prey, New Scientist
magazine said Thursday.
            Bruce Rothschild of the Arthritis Center of Northeast Ohio
in Youngstown studied the family of two-legged dinosaurs known
as Therapods, which includes the deadly Tyrannosaurus rex.
            He X-rayed fossil skeletons and found that ribs from some
specimens of a smaller species known as Allosaurus showed the
kind of fractures that would have been caused by a belly flop on
to hard ground while running.
            Rothschild will present his findings at a symposium in
Philadelphia being held as part of the Dinofest exhibition this
week.
            He told New Scientist the results showed that some large
members of the Therapod family were not the sluggish creatures
that some paleontologists have suggested.
            ``They were active and could survive when injured,''
Rothschild said.
            In 1995 James Farlow of Indiana-Purdue University argued
that the Tyrannosaurus rex could not have run faster than 20
mph, because a fall would have probably killed the six-ton
meat-eater.
            Farlow said Rothschild's results were consistent with his
theory, as Allosaurus -- weighing between one and three tons --
might have been able to recover after falling over and cracking
a few ribs.