Re: Coprophagy addendum

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

Stephan Pickering (StephanPickering@cs.com) wrote:

<Re: Qilongia's elucidations (?posturing). I fail to grasp the purpose of
your note.>

  The purpose of my note was to point out, as others have said (most
recently Tim, but Morgan and others before him) to illustrate the lack of
complete ability in applying behaviors and etological concepts to fossil
taxa, especially when the evidence for such suggestive qualities in those
preserved forms is equivocal or does not in any manner suggest behavior of
any sort. They are corpses ... corpses do nothing on their own. We are
blessed with a grand-total of one specimen association of a dromaeosaurid
quite unequivocally attached to another specimen (a protoceratopsid)
without any manner of associated material indicating any manner of packing
behavior. Other material, as I attempted to show, can easily be explained
as water transport-induced association, rather than any form of behavior.
Only one of these is explicitly testable (mine) whereas the other requires
conjecture and a little bit of imagination, but is no less constructive,
and has captured the minds of many paleoartists since 1970.

<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.>

  I disagree. I made no statement to my knowledge that called into
question clarity, but simply presented data and theory that was to the
effect to counter the statements. Not you. I have in every attempt on this
list tried to be as least detrimental to the individual and have only used
the data; if I am pounding on the rock, this is not to insult the
gardener. I would not beat the artist because his line wasn't perfect.

<...if you care to learn something of extant theropods.>

  The observations I possess on birds today has lead me down quite a few
paths. Though I enforce most of my attention on methods of prey capture,
feeding styles and mechanics, and in the evolution of bird guilds, I have
looked at vultures, including that of *Gypaetus*, not a "true" vulture
(stem of vulturid) but a falconiform, and class associations at corpses. I
have also likened the anatomies of various dromaeosaurids and
stem-dromaeosaurs [I defend this use, Mike, as a colloquial expression and
not a vernacular clade name] to extant predators (mostly mammalian). The
idea that birds must compare with theropods because birds are modified
theropods sort of ignores that theropods as a whole were terrestrial and
the majority were much larger than most birds, and had effective
prey-capture anatomy more similar to non-avian animals than like them.
Birds are useful ... to an extent -- not to a universal quality, however.

<My use of "dromaeosaur 'packs'" was an alliterative generalization, not a
diagnosis within the paradigms of phylogenetic systematics.>

  Nor was it mine. I did not expound on phylogenetics to formulate my
refutation, either, but to show that there are no such dromaeosaur packs
to be found that can be conclusively determined so. To bring the idea of
packs to dromaeosaurs, I needed to look at the evidence in various
dromaeosaurs, and found it to be lacking in regards to eusocial
organization.

<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...>

  This is possible, as it is easy to conceive of such social order in
highly intelligent mammals and modern birds ... but hardly were the
extinct theropod brains as complex as hunting birds or mammals today, and
even very primitive mammals had more complex brains than did
*Archaeopteryx*. One would think without a unifying social order (produced
by chemicals in eusocial insects; or intelligence [?] in mammals) there
would be no such product. This condition has been raised before, and
indicates a major flaw in socially organizing dinosaurs together.

<...unless, one chooses to think there was interregnums between meals, and
the theropods wandered off separately to preen and confound the
situation.>

  But we have no evidence to suggest this. While absence of evidence is
not neccessarily evidence of absence, it can be. And in paleontology,
perhaps fortunately, absence of evidence is just that. Speculative
scenarios are often wonderful means of testing ideas, but in the realm of
strict associations, it is not always possible to show _why_ these
associations occur. Environment is the first criterion, as in many marine
assemblages, whereas the estuarine, fluvial environment of the Antlers
associations of *Deinonychus* and *Tenontosaurus* make the associations
suspect as evidence for pack hunting. There is also absolutely no modern
analogue (a condition that might appeal to some) for such behavior of
small "wolf-sized" animals attacking an animal several times the size of a
Cape buffalo, as lions will do _only_ when that animal is incapacitated
(they [meaning the buffalo] can and do kill even when in such dire
straits). Thus the association is doubly suspect. You can thank Pete
Buchholz for that last one.

<Your quibbling is non-scientific, as there is every indication that
dinosaurs were social animals.>

  I disagree as to my methods. As for evidence of sociality, show me....

<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. >

  This was the data that was used to first form the idea that
dromaeosaurids were pack hunters. The idea of allosaurs came later
(distribution analysis of the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry), as did albertosaur
packing, and even Currie admits that it is highly speculative.... I can
easily use the high number of *Confuciusornis* specimens in the IVPP
collections and elsewhere in China, such as at the nearby NGMC (both are
in Beijing) to indicate that they flocked in the Yixian skies ... but
flocking requires an association between members and this is not founded,
thus the theory is based only on number from a formation, and flocking is
not supported.

<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,>

  Actualism and the form-function complex (which I work with) are not the
same; in fact they comply with a spectrum of observation that inference is
a part of, but the latter is also retroactive, and they are therefore
quite different. Inference, which Witmer disucsses in his 1995 paper and
the 1998 monograph in _Bulletin to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology,
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology_ 18(supplement to 2), is to apply an
observation from a source to an object. I can infer the color of the sky
at noon here in Idaho (blue) as to be general given the Earth's
atmosphere, thus infer the color of the sky above New York City to be the
same. This is a testable condition as someone in NYC can then look out the
sky and verify or deny my inference. Whereas I can say that because birds
are social, therefore I can infer than theropods in general are social;
but I may then say that because there are more than a few antisocial
birds, generally theropods must be antisocial.

  Science is about inference, but all that is is to say that something has
data to support a quality to something else ... I may then be permitted
the ability to test this.

  I did. Don't try to smash me because I disagreed, smash my data, or
present more data.

<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.>

  Cheers, and not the least bit upset or trying to "posture" myself in any 
manner,

=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

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