Re: teeth and hunting strategies

["Patrick Norton" <ptnorton@email.msn.com>]

>Probably related to this, allosaurids lack the well developed bony palate
(roof of the mouth) found in tyrannosaurids<

I?m curious about the T. rex palate?I?ve been struggling to produce a
sculpture of the T. rex skull for a while and the palatal bones are a real
puzzle.  But this leads me to the question of what is meant by a ?well
developed bony palate??  Molnar, in his work on the T. rex cranium (Molnar,
R.E. The Cranial Morphology of Tyrannosaurus rex. Palaeontographica Abt. A.
Bd. 217. August 1991), mentions that, unlike T. rex, the palatine bones of
other tyrannosaurs, notably Albertosaurs and Daspletosaurs, are full of
foramina and actually have "thin" dorsal and ventral walls.  He also says,
if I read him correctly, that Albertosaurs and Daspletosaurs had a vaulted
palate rather than the ventrally planar palate he described for T. rex.
This would seem to suggest a cross sectional shape of the palatal complex of
Albertosaurs and Daspletosaurs more like that of the A. fragilis than T.
rex.  So what is it about the generalized tyrannosaur palate that makes it
more "developed"?