Don't mess with the T-Rex: Researchers find giant predators hunted in gangs
comments
They are already among the most feared predators ever to have roams the planet.
But researchers now believe that tyrannosaurs hunted in packs - which researchers have dubbed 'a terror'.
They discovered footprints of tree of the mega-predators in Canada, show them mid-hunt.
The fearsome T-Rex: researcher now say the animal hunted in packs.
HOW T-REX WALKED
A recent study suggests that the fearsome dinosaur's walk was hip driven.
T-Rex lived during the Late Cretaceous period - 66million years ago.
While most people think the carnivorous dinosaur stood upright, it had a bird-like posture and kept its tail in the air and its head pitched forward.
Its massive skull was balanced by its heavy tail, which was around 15 per cent of its body mass.
The creature would have changed direction slowly because if its massive inertia but was agile enough to run.
T-Rex had a top speed of 25mph (40kmp) which is a little slower than a horse.
The ferocious beasts may have 'stuck together as a pack to increase their chances of bringing down prey and individually surviving,' study co-author Richard McCrea, a curator at the Peace Region Palaeontology Center in Canada, told Livescience.
Once believed to be solitary creatures, evidence has grown that tyrannosaurs were more 'gregarious' than thought, according to McCrea's study published in the scientific journal PLOS One.
And the fossils are close to perfect, McCrea said.
The surface the animals trod was 'pretty much the consistency of Play-Doh,' he said, with a very high clay content.
That was then covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash.
Conditions were so ideal that impressions of the dinosaurs' rough skin are clearly visible.
'This is the most ideal situation you could almost ask for,' he told the Prince George Citizen.
On the run: Researchers discovered footprints of tree of the mega-predators in Canada, showing them mid-hunt.
From the size of the footprints, the researchers put the beasts in their late 20s or early 30s
The team eventually discovered a patch 197 feet (60 meters) long by 13 feet (4 m) wide filled with footprints from multiple dinosaurs, including tyrannosaurs, other small theropods, and duck-billed dinosaurs called hadrosaurs.
The used 3D modelling to show exactly how the animals walked
'One trackway consists of three tridactyl footprints, and two adjacent trackways consist of two footprints each, the researchers wrote.
'All three trackways show animals bearing southeast within an 8.5 meter-wide corridor.
'Similarities in depth and preservation of the tyrannosaurid tracks indicate that these three trackways were made by track-makers walking concurrently in the same direction.'
These dinosaurs were apparently walking in the silty sediments from an overflowing river and formed the track marks about 70 million years ago. A thick layer of volcanic ash then preserved the marks, McCrea said.
In total, the team found seven tracks that were made by three tyrannosaurs.
Though the researchers couldn't identify the specific species, it's likely given the period and location where they were found that Albertosaurus, Gorgosaurus or Daspletosaurus left the tracks, McCrea said.
Put the internet to work for you.
0 comments:
Post a Comment