Fwd: RE: T. rex Predation

[Mark Hallett <marksabercat@yahoo.com>]

Tim, Good point about the possiblity of greater
tyrannosaurid tooth size being an adaptation for
better predation on large prey as an adaptation
effective for group hunting instead of or as well as
solitary predation, although I obviously wasn't
implying that T. rex had a weak bite! I am at work on
a paper that will discuss possible theropod predation
techniques on sauropods, and your comment about T. rex
adult/juvenile aggregations has bearing on this. If
the juveniles of tyrannosaurids (and other large
theropods)had a similar shaped dentition and were
consuming similar food, there is the possibility that
they were also predating on animals appropriate to
their size range in the post hatchling through
subadult stage, taking on bigger prey items as they
grew either singly or in groups. I't doesn't mean they
would be necessarily operating as a "pack", however,
and I think it would be improbable that any except the
largest and oldest subadults would be hunting with
fully-grown adults--the chances of injury would be too
great. Also, habitually group-hunting predators (at
least in some living mammals like lions and hyenas)
may perform solitary hunting, based on factors like
type of prey, prey abundance and opportunistic, random
encounters with certain prey items.

--Mark Hallett   
Note: forwarded message attached.


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*         ---REMAINDER OF MESSAGE TRUNCATED---            *
*     This post contains a forbidden message format       *
*  (such as an attached file, a v-card, HTML formatting)  *
*    This Mail List at USC.EDU only accepts PLAIN TEXT    *
* If your postings display this message your mail program *
* is not set to send PLAIN TEXT ONLY and needs adjusting  *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *