The irony of it all is he is the one accusing HP Headden of patronizing. At any rate, there is not a enough evidence to draw the conclusions you are drawing...If some theropods hunted in packs, that is about all we can scientifically suggest, not the social dynamics that you repeatably suggest on little or any information. As for learning to hunt, AFAIK, most birds don't need to learn to learn to hunt, so what makes you think a dromaeosaur would?
oh, and there is a convienent shorthand for extant dinosaur or extant Avialan dinosaur...it is called bird..
StephanPickering@cs.com wrote:
Re: Qilongia's elucidations (?posturing). I fail to grasp the purpose of your note. It does not matter what statistical percentages one uses: theropods today (vultures, in particular) are capable of killing prey, sometimes do so (I do not believe there is evidence suggesting they dine at the golden arches). I have re-read my sentences, and discern no use of words which, when read together, are not clear. Your re-wording my sentence is unnecessary patronizing, not dialogue about theropod ecomorphologies. Cf. P. Mundy et al., 1992, The vultures of Africa (Academic Press), and H. Frey and others who have sustained the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture, if you care to learn something of extant theropods. My use of "dromaeosaur 'packs'" was an alliterative generalization, not a diagnosis within the paradigms ! of! ! phylogenetic systematics. Allow me to reword it this way: it is possible that, w! ! hen two theropods were in the same general area, it is possible they may have seen the same prey, and it is possible they may have, in concert, chased, cornered, and killed the prey. Moreover, if one or more theropods were observing this behaviour, and joined in the frolic, one can, then, make the deduction that a flock/pack, within a temporal framework, was in the works. With young to raise, and to teach how to hunt, avenues of behaviour was also possible: a group learning milieu (hyaenids use this), or a solitary teacher and a small class of students (cf. cheetahs, or some extant avialian theropods, e.g., kestrels, eagles, vultures). Hence, I infer that it is possible "dromaeosaurs" (in the broad vernacular sense of the word known to all of us), or velociraptors, or whatever, were pack hunters, were, in fact, highly mobile animals living in social groups...unless, one chooses t! o ! ! think there was interregnums between meals, and the theropods wandered off separately! ! to preen and confound the situation. Your quibbling is non-scientific, as there is every indication that dinosaurs were social animals. The rest of your comments re: the association of Deinonychus and Tenontosaurus are equally unnecessary: I am familiar with the data in question re: Deinonychus-like teeth and tenontosaur disarticulated skeletons, and with the the emerging inferences re: allosaurs and tyrannosaurs hunting in groups. I believe Phil Currie and Pete Larson have advanced logical inferences about behaviour patterns. Inferences is, to be sure, the correct English word, although I have a fondness for Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's actualisme (Cuvier was rather good at it sometimes), and Walter Bock's form-function complex, i.e., deductions about extinct behaviour systems by careful (and logical) observations of ongoing processes. I have ! de! ! voted a lifetime to studying dinosaurs, searching for links between behaviour systems of! ! various taxa re: brooding strategies, hunting and migratory patterns, and so on. Enough said.