Tenontosaurus Its Whats for Dinner

>> YOUR LINK HERE: ___ http://youtube.com/watch?v=8s2ggBFLn0U

Another stunner! • This amazing #Tenontosaurus was found with 11 shed #Deinonychus teeth around it. Some suggest it is evidence for pack hunting #dromaeosaurs. • Let’s put pack hunting aside for now and focus on how pristine the skeleton is. Such incredibly cool articulation! I wonder what happened to the part of the tail that is missing. The infamous “discovery point”? Damaged during collection? Off exhibit for study? • Notice the hands and feet aren’t present. Were they drug off, like elk limbs in the mouths of Yellowstone wolves? Eroded away before burial or sometime in the last 110 mya? If drug away, apparently they liked “wings and thighs” from the Cretaceous Fried Chicken (KFC… groan). • I watched a coyote rip open a baby bison, digging into the innards until its shoulder blades were hitting the entry hole. Did #theropod #dinosaurs dig in deep like mammalian predators, eating the soft parts, then dragging a limb away for later like canids? • This specimen is much smaller than the adult beasts I have seen. I’d wager a single Deinonychus could take it down via ambush. However, with 11 shed teeth, that would constitute nearly 25% of its dentition lost, suggesting that a number of individuals shed their teeth while feasting. This doesn’t mean they were cooperating though. • Using phylogenetic bracketing, as we do for feathers presence when we don’t have actual feather evidence, suggests they didn’t pack hunt as birds nor crocs cooperatively hunt. Sure the Harris Hawk will, but even that seems marginal. They work to take down a large jackrabbit in times of bad drought. Out of the 10,000 bird species I’d hate to select that one species as proof dromaeosaurs did so. Far more parsimonious to assume they worked alone and, like Komodo dragons, when they sensed a kill had been made they hustled over, which would also explain tracks all going the same direction, best make haste to get the good parts of a kill! • The skull looks exquisite, as do the vertebrae, maybe not enough meat on them to make it worthwhile to drag away? I wonder if there are bite marks on the skeleton. • This beauty is at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. • #FossilCrates

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