From: StephanPickering@cs.com
Reply-To: StephanPickering@cs.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Coprophagy addendum
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 07:10:16 EDT
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, when 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
to 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 devoted 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.