matrilineal dinosaurs

[StephanPickering@cs.com]

       Ever since Gregory Paul's 'Predatory dinosaurs of the world', I have preferred the albeit informal adjective of 'dinosaurology'. Further thoughts for discussion: a female dinosaur produces large gametes, thus parental care necessitating more time/caloric energy than among males. A male dinosaur's reproductive success is logically limited (M. Andersson's 1994 study is useful). Before K/T, it is presumable, e.g., that dromaeosaurs were gregarious taxa, living in packs having several matrilines of adult females and one, or more, immigrant adult males. Female theropods would be philopatric, males dispersing from the pack when reaching sexual maturity. High ranking females within a pack would begin mating earlier, having shorter intervals between egg laying, their hatchlings surviving to adulthood more so than females of lower rank within the pack. Perhaps!
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the shattered eggs and littered bones of hatchlings sometimes found are those of lower-ranking females. In a new pack, the immigrant male (if accepted and not killed outright by dominant females and their resident males) would be subordinate to natal females (including their offspring), the males deferring to natal members of the pack even during feeding, and the male reproductive success would be determined by the tenure of their stay with a new pack. In this, in looking at the extant morphology of "raptors", one can hypothesize that velociraptorine social lives were probably akin to cercopithecine primates and spotted hyaenas: long lives, small numbers of offspring, social groups permanent due to matrilines of adult female sistes and their offspring (= overlapping generations in a viable pack). Among larger theropods, intrasexual competition among females would be more "violent" than among males, resulting in "masculine" females and "female" males. Regardless of size, it i!
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parsimonious to assume multisized theropod taxa had variable reproductive performances/breeding biologies predicated upon a combination of available energy and the abundance of prey availability during transitions of seasons. Aggressive, larger-sized females was probably the norm, males smaller and likely rather meek, i.e., natal males would not mate but immigrant males would. Male dinosaur behaviour to be adapted to female behaviour patterns. The behaviour of all female theropods would be predicated upon the number /distribution/defensibility of carcasses/live prey available; this is observable among spotted hyaenas and female chimpanzees among mammals.