After watching too much discovery channel I have figured out the T-Rex debate(s).
Apparently the people, who were rather generously portrayed as Ross, can’t decide if the T-Rex was a hunter or a scavenger, or if it could run or if it only walked.
If it only walked it couldn’t cover enough ground to be a hunter and was a scavenger.
However, the T-Rex didn’t run or walk. As I look at the T-Rex I realize a distinct similarity to a modern day animal. The Kangaroo.
Obviously the T-Rex hopped around, covering ground very quickly and was therefore, a hunter.
Oh and the missing link was in my couch cushions.
Sorry about that.
That would be interesting but for the fact that we have some T-Rex trails and no signs of Hopping motion if I remember correctly. If I remember incorrectly, nevermind.
T-Rex’s appeal was an underlying “funk”* groove, hitherto unknow in British “Pop”. Where Marc came up with it is unknown, but he was clearly ahead of his time.
What poppycock! Everyone knows that the funxction of T-rex’s tiny little arms was to clean the teeth of other predators! It was the cleaner wrasse of its day.
This point has always struck me as particularly ridiculous, and just shows that most paleontogists know little about ecology. Since recently dead aniimals are much less common than live ones, scavengers have to cover more ground than hunters. Modern scavengers can either fly (vultures, etc) so they can cover enormous amounts of ground, or else are quite small (mainly insects). Most mammals that scavenge, such as hyenas, are primarily predators that just supplement their diet by scavenging when they get the chance.
At first, the discoverer of the dinosaur Laelaps (Cope? Damn, I can’t remember) thought that it resembled a kangaroo, and sketched it in a similar pose. Later, dinsaur artist par excellence Charles Knight painted a pair of gamboling Laelaps thuis way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Laelaps_by_Charles_Knight.png
Later on, people decided that dinosaurs, being cold-blooded reptiles, couldn’t gambol like that, despite the skeletal evidence. And Laelaps got re-saddlede with the depressing name Dryptosaurus. Nowadays people see the original concepy as probably closer to reality.
But Laelaps/Dryptosaurus was man-sized or smaller. The mind boggles at the thought of a caroming T. Rex.
