What was Eating the Morrison Sauropods?

[@thegreattotemaster]

"What Was Eating The Morrison Sauropods?" sounds like the name of a creepypasta.

[@Ptaku93]

Naah, more like a comedy soap opera

[@JaxanOBirdy]

Both of these are so accurate 😂

[@thegreattotemaster]

@@JaxanOBirdyAll it needs is the second line: "Whatever It Was, It Survived"

[@thegreattotemaster]

@@JaxanOBirdy That or "Whatever It Was, I Think We Woke It Up"

[@whiteegretx]

Lmao these comments are great 😂

[@krankarvolund7771]

Even if the study is not really conculsive or useful, I remember a scientist once said taht we should publish more failed studies, at least so that other scientists don't have to try that same experiment and fail it on their own ^^

[@RaptorChatter]

And especially for studies like paleontology which rely on museum specimens it's so important to know what they have. You can't study them if you don't know they exist, and this paper really helps show that there's enough materials to try and start working towards building some understanding of feeding habits.

[@Tuishimi]

I imagine there were TONS of smaller prey for all predators to hunt and eat. I doubt the sight of giant sauropods in a huge herd was common. If they were abandoned as eggs, when they hatched they would be prime targets during their first decade of life. I am sure a lot more died from disease and predation than made it to adult hood.

[@RaptorChatter]

Almost certainly. There's many strategies to life, and rather than caring directly for young it seems like early on sauropods took the "tons of kids and good luck" strategy. Their entire reproductive strategy is built on most of them not making it to adulthood.

[@scottthesmartape9151]

Or maybe they cared about their babies

[@bencoomer2000]

Sigh. Again with "apex scavengers" for the big carnosaurs. Going after adult sauropods would be a big risk activity, but since we can assume a LOT of juveniles were around, they probably wouldn't need to. Just irritating how something fairly basic like "predators target young and old" is just forgotten.

[@RaptorChatter]

I will admit I do think it's more complex than that. For example Mt. lions do target adults of certain prey, even bighorn sheep fairly regularly. However, I think you could do some size classes with this in a study, because there's only one group of lions that targets elephants, and they only target young ones. So realistically I think there could be a general trend of size, but the "young and old" argument has won out. In this case with sauropods it was probably correct though.

[@CyberGoons]

i love learning about dinosaurs, thanks for awesome dino content

[@justpiper0916]

New favorite channel (:

[@RaptorChatter]

Thanks! Glad to hear it

[@NitroIndigo]

I've wondered if there are any animals we only know about from bitemarks.

[@RaptorChatter]

Not bite marks, but we know the evolution of certain tube worms in the deep sea based on how fossil whale skulls have broken apart. In the modern day they burrow into the skulls, which damages the bones in a very specific way. The worms themselves were soft though, so didn't fossilize.

[@patreekotime4578]

There are almost certainly some animals we know only from trackways! There is a recent case of tracks from an animal with very bird-like feet that predates the evolution of birds. Perhaps it belongs to an animal that has already been discovered, or perhaps this is the first evidence of its existence!

[@bkjeong4302]

What I find particular frustrating about Pahl is his tendency to outright ignore studies that contradict his assumptions (for example, he keeps harping on on how Allosaurus was poorly suited for hunting due to lack of binocular vision, even when presented with studies indicating that binocular vision is irrelevant for depth perception or predation in avian theropods and presumably non-avian theropods as well; and yes this also largely debunks the supposed superiority of tyrannosaur eyesight). Ironically one of the coauthors of Lei et al has been claimed by Pahl to support his argument of non-tyrannosaur theropods all being obligate scavengers of sauropod carcasses, though another coauthor (David Hone) has publicly disagreed with Pahl. It’s worth nothing that even ziphodont theropods with serrated dentition had adaptations for handle biting into bone if their teeth were to make contact with such, namely notches set in between the serrations (similar to a surgical saw) to dissipate the stresses involved. So while they were unable to pulverize bone as tyrannosaurs could, they likely could have sliced through it instead, and we do have that Allosaurus coprolite with plenty of bone fragments in it. Indeed this was a big point of Lei et al-that Morrison theropods were eating more bones than expected, especially when eating juvenile/subadult sauropods with smaller bones.

[@RaptorChatter]

David Hone is one of my favorite researchers. If he could take grad students (I've asked) I would love to get a position with him. He does very interesting behavioral studies, that are reasonable, without coming to outlandish conclusions.

[@Envy_May]

wait > binocular vision is irrelevant for depth perception how can that even be possible ? isn't binocular vision the only mechanism in the first place through which we perceive depth at _all_ ?

[@bkjeong4302]

@@Envy_May That’s what was assumed but it seems this only applies to mammals; research on avian eyesight has shown that binocular vision isn’t that important for birds (Martin, 2009).

[@patreekotime4578]

This is a great discussion. So many times scientific research is just taken at face value as fact because it exists. Science literacy means being able to read a paper and see if the premise and the methodologies meet the basic requirements for rigor or if the data even matches up with the stated results. Too often papers have a skewed or weak premise, weak sample size, no control, or data that simply doesn't support stated results. And the media and public have no interest or ability to parse all of that, which is what encourages the creation of more sloppy papers for clickbait headlines. But its also important for the public to realize that even papers with faulty assumptions or faulty results may still contain valuable data that can be used elsewhere. As long as the data hasn't been fudged... THAT is the only truly unforgivable sin for research IMO.

[@phelanbutonyoutube]

Sorry guys it was me my bad

[@kilianteni7884]

Theropods

[@robertstone9988]

Whare o pods?

[@kilianteni7884]

@@robertstone9988 Saurophaganax Allosaurus Torvosaurus Ceratosaurus

[@honeybadgerbomb4469]

@@robertstone9988 They're over Ther o pod!

[@Mr.Estiverne]

Its my My o pod, its their o pod! 🥁

[@maozilla9149]

good show

[@RaptorChatter]

Thanks!

[@maozilla9149]

your welcome@@RaptorChatter

[@Tarbtano]

I actually encountered the scavenger hypothesis author on Reddit years before the paper came out (he was picking arguments there) and they already had the exact same conclusion. It was surreal, almost like a inverted Jack Horner. Instead of it being T.rex is a scavenger unlike other theropods, it was all big theropods *but* T.rex are scavengers.

[@allosaurus6668]

maybe its saurophaganax

[@Dracovenatrix]

Quiet kid

[@allosaurus6668]

@@Dracovenatrix no

[@Dracovenatrix]

@@allosaurus6668 yes

[@allosaurus6668]

@@Dracovenatrix no

[@Dracovenatrix]

@@allosaurus6668 yes

[@isaacs1052]

Good review. My takeaway is that it's like asking what eats a sea turtle as big as a sperm whale. the answer is probably nothing kills it but everything will go for a baby or a corpse.

[@dagoodboy6424]

Sorry i got a bit hangry.🦖

[@CodyosVladimiros]

In other words, there's a "survivor bias" in fossilization in the Morrison, that what we have preserved are largely what Allosaurus and the others WEREN'T eating?

[@RaptorChatter]

Or at least weren't able to fully eat. And that's probably true of most other formations, smaller animals would get scavenged, or just been broken apart due to transportation and geologic forces.

[@ChipsDaCat]

Me, I was eating the Morrison sauropods. I eated them.

[@cw7429]

Another banger

[@william3100]

Maybe there was just a lot of opportunities and food in general for sauropods, and that's why so many large ones were present?

[@RaptorChatter]

But we should still then expect more smaller ones. If a ton made it to adult hood, then we should expect even more young, with many dying because of drought, predation, etc. But there's many fewer of their fossils. The reasonable assumption is that they were mostly eaten (hunted or scavenged), not leaving fossils. Otherwise they should be even more common, or at least moderately sized ones, weighing around a ton or two should be. Those would be large enough to be easily found, and not become destroyed by the geologic forces around them.

[@william3100]

@RaptorChatter then why were there still a lot of big ones? How could there be fewer young, but more adults? Also, I was talking about different genera like diplodocus, apatosaurus, brontosaurus, brachiosaurus, camarasaurus, barosaurus, supersaurus, amphicoelius, maarapunisaurus, and much more. For so much predation towards young, why would so many sauropods be present? Not even most places, before or after this time, had THIS many.

[@L--M]

unrelated (im watching the stuff i missed) but I like your shirt!

[@mark-ek4ve]

Me, I bought two from there yesterday, they are a lot cheaper then Tesco's.

[@matthewbromm7552]

bravo

[@RaptorChatter]

Thank you!

[@coppergryphon7787]

Aliens 😜

[@rappar9673]

HWAT WAS EATING THOSE GIANT T-REX, THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO KONW!

[@DrBunnyMedicinal]

*CHOMP!*