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One of the most
evocative descriptions of the tyrannosaurids I've ever
come across dubbed them "land sharks", and it's quite easy to imagine these creatures accelerating through a clearing and crashing into the side of a grazing dino with their head down & mouth wide. The arms appear to have been robust enough to still serve some function, but I can't imagine them being used in predation - 7 tonnes of teeth barrelling into your prey will do most of the work ;-) - Too true - and the theory holds that the capacity
to inflict massive trauma with a single bite allows the predator to dash in,
take a single chomp then stand back and wait for the prey to collapse from blood
loss. This minimises both the need to engage in risky close quarters grappling
with large animals, as well as energy expenditure. Among living species, the
Komodo Dragon is the best analogue and komodoensis will track wounded (and
poisoned prey) for considerable periods until blood loss and septicemia overcome
it. Of course, this is only a viable tactic for top predators, if the
dragon wasn't at the top of the chain it would be too likely to loose its prey
to bigger hitters. But there was no bigger hitter than rex. The
same reasoning has been applied to ziphodont and supposedly terrestrial
crocodiles.
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Dr Stephen Wroe
HOMEPAGE - http://www.bio.usyd.edu.au/staff/swroe/swroe.htm
Institute of Wildlife Research, School of Biological Sciences (AO8) University of Sydney NSW Australia 2006 Email: swroe@bio.usyd.edu.au; Email: thylacoleo@optusnet.com.au Ph. 02 9351 8764; Ph. 02 9702 6435 ______________________________________________________ |