I do not think
anyone had much doubt but the Theropods are essentially crocodiles adapted to
sprinting or charging their prey. Once
you see them in that light, it can be no other way. At the same time, their ability to shed heat
was surely limited and this made them nocturnal hunters and baskers during the
day.
It may well have
also stayed close to water and likely failed to follow herds outright as today’s
carnivores do. I also suspect that they
were an apex predator of crocodiles.
They are nicely engineered for just that.
In the meantime
we have a fossil showing its ability to chomp on anything available.
It's Official:
T. Rex Was Ferocious Predator, Not Scavenger
By Tia Ghose, Staff Writer |
July 15, 2013 05:24pm ET
As most anyone who went through the "dinosaur
phase" in childhood already guessed Tyrannosaurus rex was a
fearsome predator.
A plant-eating dinosaur found with a Tyrannosaurus
rex tooth lodged in its the tail of a plant-eating dinosaur has confirmed
what scientists long suspected: T. rex was a predator.
The tooth was discovered in the tail of a hadrosaur
that lived about 66 million years ago.
"It's the Holy Grail for a paleontologist,"
said study co-author David Burnham, a paleontologist at the University of
Kansas. "Not only was the tooth broken off, but the tail had healed around
it. That means that Tyrannosaurus
rex attacked that other dinosaur." [Image
Gallery: See the T. rex bite wound ]
The findings were published today (July 15) in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Circumstantial evidence
Although T. rex has been portrayed as the
deadliest dino predator, the case for predation wasn't airtight. Even though
stomach remains, a fearsome bite and
body plan all suggested the imposing dinosaur attacked and ate other prey, some
paleontologists proposed that T.
rex was a scavenger, feasting on already dead animals but not killing
its prey itself.
A few other herbivore fossils had been found with
traces of T. rex bite wounds, but the evidence wasn't conclusive.
Burnham and his colleagues were excavating in the
Hell Creek formation in South Dakota.
During the Cretaceous
Period, the area was a vast network of forested rivers, and the formation
now contains myriad fossils of dinosaurs and small mammals from the period.
'Beyond a reasonable doubt'
Burnham's graduate student, Robert DePalma,
uncovered two fused vertebrae from the tail of a hadrosaur, likely Edmontosaurus
annectens, a plant eater that munched on pine needles using scissorlike
teeth.
Lodged inside the vertebrae was part of a tooth, and
the area around it showed signs of healing. When the team analyzed the
serrations on the tooth, they confirmed it belonged to a T. rex.
"We were able to establish beyond a reasonable
doubt that that is a T.rex tooth," Burnham told LiveScience.
The T. rex likely attacked the hadrosaur,
but the herbivore was able to escape, Burnham said. The healing over the tooth
indicates that the hadrosaur lived awhile after the attack.
The new findings prove that the iconic dinosaur
preyed on hadrosaurs.
"This is the first time we have physical
evidence, and without physical evidence for predation, people always said, 'Oh
yeah, T.rex could have been a scavenger,'" Burnham said.
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