Clamping and slashing T-Rexes

["Ilja Nieuwland" <I.J.J.Nieuwland@let.rug.nl>]

Hello all,

First of all, I'm not an expert in this area so feel free to shoot me 
if this is bull. Re Phil Senter's talk at Dinofest about T-Rex being 
either an obligate scavenger (which IMHO is a position we really 
ought to lay to rest now) or a hunter of small prey because of 
weak muscle attachments to the lower jaw and the risk of dislocating 
the lot: it occured to me that mammal predators and dromaeosaurs 
would make a somewhat bad comparison with T.rex because T.rex would 
probably have been the only one of the lot who usually slashes down, 
the upper jaw taking most if not all of the stress involved. In an 
archetypical fight between Tenontosaurs and a pack of dromaeosaurs, 
the orientation of the predators would be upward and sideways because 
the hunter is smaller than its prey; more importantly, its head is 
situated lower than the 'target area'. Therefore, it would require 
much stronger muscle attachments to the lower jaw. Likewise, in 
mammalian predators the predator's heads are lower than their prey's. 
T.rexes, on the other hand, would usually attack prey their own 
height or lower (not necessarily smaller), thereby . This would also 
explain why juvenile T.rexes appear to have been more 'slashers' than 
'clampers'. 

Just my 2p worth.

Ilja Nieuwland
Groningen,NL