Re: New Nature paper on Tyrannosaur Locomotion

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2002 17:15:22  
 Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
>Yes, Tim Williams found me out...
>
>In this week's Nature:
>JOHN R. HUTCHINSON and MARIANO GARCIA (2002).  _Tyrannosaurus_ was not a
>fast runner.  Nature 415: 1018 - 1021
>
>and the News & Views:
>ANDREW A. BIEWENER (2002). Walking with tyrannosaurs.  Nature 415: 972-973.

Interesting!  Like Randall, I'm very happy to see this published (especially 
after the speculation caused by the Armour Symposium).

>The basic conclusion: big _T. rex_ specimens did not have sufficient muscle
>mass to be able to produce a fast run.  

Currie seemed very interested at the Burpee Museum this weekend in the 
possibility that young members of a _Tyrannosaurus_ "herd" may have done the 
majority of the hunting.  Speculation, of course, but he points to the 
_Albertosaurus_ bone beds in Alberta as evidence that tyrannosaurids may have 
been gregarious.  He extrapolated these data to speculate that perhaps the more 
agile youngsters may have done the hunting for the older, slower adults.  

>Very, very interesting stuff.  It will be even more interesting to see this
>model tested against other, smaller theropods and other dinosaurs.  I would
>be interested in seeing how other young tyrannosaurs and ornithomimosaurs
>fare in this model.

Ah, yes!  I especially liked Currie's idea although it is obviously lacking in 
hard evidence.  However, I see it equally plausible as the scavenging 
hypothesis.  I hope that somewhere somebody is either conducting or planning to 
conduct similar research on "Tinker" and other juvenile tyrannosaur specimens.  
Some work on _Eotyrannus_ would also be nice!

Steve


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