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From: derek@nezsdc.fujitsu.co.nz (Derek Tearne)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Falling Dinosaur Lands on Butter Side
Date: 1 Feb 1996 11:47:54 +1300

mheinz@ssw.com (Michael Heinz) wrote:
>
>I thought the current state-of-the-art was that T. Rex wasn't a hunter
>at all, but a scavenger. The reasoning was both about maximum speed,
>and that the vestigal arms were simply too small to grasp prey.

I managed to have missed most of the posts in this thread (they just never seemed to have turned up).

The current 'state-of-the-art' is _not_ that T. Rex was a scavenger.

This is a theory put forward by Bob Bakker. This man being a palaeontologist who thrives on controversy. Don't get me wrong, some of his more off the wall ideas have been right on the money. However this is one of the ones which don't hold up to scrutiny.

There are only a few creatures which can currently live entirely as scavengers. The most well known of these being vultures, crows and other birds.

The main problem with living entirely on a diet of dead meat is finding it without expending more energy than one gains from eating it. This is fine if one can soar on thermals all day using relatively little energy and spot a dead or dying animal from several miles away - which vultures can.

With land animals this becomes very difficult as one has to have an incredible sense of smell to locate those few animals which die through natural attrition.

Certainly if a T. rex comes across a dead bront^h^h^h^h^hApatasaurus it would merrily scare away any other predators and chow down - all modenr carnivores do this when the opportunity arises - it's got to be more energy efficient to scoff something already dead than running after it first!. However it wouldn't grow to be so big and toothy living on the occasional bit of carrion that comes it's way.

Unless, of course, it was a cold blooded creature - but that would be contrary to Bakkers main contention that dinosaurs were warm blooded (which I agree with). But you can't have it both ways. Bakker shows in other of his own works that the T. rex predator/prey ratios were what one would have expected from a warm blooded predator. The ratios for a scavenger would differ from this.

The other problem is that of the T. rex weak and feeble arms. Some studies have shown that these arms were in fact incredibly powerful (although definately short) which implies they had a definate purpose. Exactly what that purpose was is unclear - but it isn't necessary for the animal to have used it's two fingered claws in catching prey - its array of sharp teeth set in powerful jaws would be perfectly adequate. After all, no one would suggest that Eagles or Owls must be scavengers because they have no arms at all.

However, this still leaves the question of what _did_ T. rex do with those two fingered claws?

I suspect that it used it's two fingers to make abusive gestures at smaller dinosaurs while roaring "I'm the meanest motherfucking dinosaur in the whole of gondwanaland, one more wise-crack about my arms and I'll bite your fucking head off".

Derek "I got an inflateable T. rex for christmas" Tearne

--
Derek Tearne. -- http://webservices.comp.vuw.ac.nz/artsLink/ManyHands/ Some of the more environmentally aware dinosaurs were worried about the consequences of an accident with the new Iridium enriched fusion reactor. "If it goes off only the cockroaches and mammals will survive..." they said.