Posted: Jun 19, 2014 9:34 am
theropod wrote:Jayjay4547 wrote:
Was there ever any doubt that T. Rex ate meat, even before those bite marks were found? Did palaeontologists stand around scratching their heads? Gosh maybe this was an aquatic reptile. No could it have been a wood borer? Let’s hypothesise that it ate meat, Let’s call that the T.Rex Hunting hypothesis till we get “evidence”.
Um, what? My point is that there is empirical evidence to back up the head scratching by paleontologists. This is missing from your premise. Own it.
Can you offer any evidence that palaeontologists scratched their heads over whether T. rex was a predator before finding their scratch marks on bones? Here is some evidence that, before scratch marks were found, scientists had no problem appreciating that T. rex was a carnivore. It’s from H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley and G.P. Wells 1931 The science of Life 1931 p458
“The carnivorous line became larger and larger to cope with the increasing bulk of its vegetarian relatives and prey, its teeth became more formidable, its fore-arms, at first provided with vicious claws to dig into victim, later degenerating into almost useless vestiges in favour of the huge skull with its ferocious teeth. It culminated in the Tyrannosaurus, whose knee was a tall man’s height above the ground, whose head was twenty feet up in the air- formidable, if ponderous, engines of destruction.”
One could quibble about some things in that passage, but these puvblic-intellectual authors had no trouble figuring that Tyrannoaurus was a carnivore. About the only instance I can think of when scientists have had difficulty in immediately seeing the significant nature of a fossil, has been the australopiths- I mean, seeing that they were adept users of foreign objects in a fighting antipredation strategy.
theropod wrote:Australopiths had teeth that were good for biting dead things. T.Rex’s teeth were good for biting things that it intended would soon be dead.
Says you.
I said that Australopiths were good at biting dead things, on the basis of their lacking fangs, whereby primates generally tear out chunks using their powerful fore-arms and grasping hands. I cited Fitzpatrick’s account of the method used by a dog-killing baboon. And I cited Watts et al on the damage that chimps do to other chimps, often using biting. Here is the link again, see table 2.
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/mitani/files/watts_et_al_2006.pdf
theropod wrote:
Besides, you still seem to want to make T. rex into a pure predator.
I was saying a very simple thing: that one can immediately see that T. rex was a carnivore. And I was hoping to use that as common ground for the argument that you don’t need to find fossil weapons to see that the australopiths used them defensively. But sure, if you like, the T rex was as pure a predator as one might hope to find. That station in life might well include opportunistic scavenging and cannibalism.
theropod wrote:If social structure and numbers were good for avoiding predation then termites would have nothing to worry about. But they have social structure, numbers and soldiers. Put your hand in a termite nest and one of those can give you a bite to remember. So injected poison can be an antipredation method but for an African mammal, if it can’t sprint or climb a tree better than a leopard or hide in obscurity, then it comes down to applying either blunt or sharp trauma to the predator. Not that different from your Nebraska dinosaurs.
My Nebraska dinosaurs? Have you ever actually read a word I've written here? Seriously, have you?
I read your posts with interest and attention. By “Your Nebraska dinosaurs” I was referring to this passage from your post #234:
“Edmontosaurus annectens have been on my mind lately (mainly 'cause this is the time of year to start field ops in the northern plains). I personally know of 4 mass mortality sites where thousands of these duck billed herbivores are entombed, and have worked at two of them. In both cases it appears as if the dinosaurs...”
Great plains not Nebraska? Hokay, Sorry.
theropod wrote: I doubt termites have much to worry about. They've been around one hell of a lot longer than humans have, and their defense systems must work or there wouldn't be such things as termites. Thanks for making my point for me.
Termites are predated at least by aardvark,pangolin, ants, I guess spiders, and of course, spectacularly by birds. They are embedded in the African food web, just like the australopiths were. Of course their defence systems work, so must those of the australopiths. I don’t see how I was making your point for you.
theropod wrote: More assertions you can't, or won't, support with anything but more assertion. Are you sure you want to limit these early hominids to a defense with sticks by a select few members of the troop? Have you never considered the possibility that they all stood their ground and may have even acted aggressively in unison when confronted by a leopard? A unified front is a daunting thing.
That’s a good point. In the insect world where I cited termites you could equally cite bees, where the hive majority are all equally equipped. In the primate world, baboons seem to mob leopards as a mass, even in one report by Cheney, including a female with its infant:
http://www.ssc.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/silk/PDF%20Files%20Pubs/Cheney%20et%20al%202004.pdf
But the males are more capable at inflicting harm. Because they are bigger and have bigger canines.
theropod wrote:Where social structure and numbers come in is the troop needs to organise so the minimum number of members apply the maximum trauma with minimum effort.
So 4 members of the troop confronting a leopard with sticks is better at inflicting trauma than an entire troop? How does that work?
OK, if the whole troop got involved, the more effective their choice and use of sticks, the more trauma to the predators and the less damage to themselves.
theropod wrote:What the 40-years that the Piltdown forgery went undetected shows is that paleoanthropologists like everyone else, are blinded by what they want to see. And what they want to see is culturally determined. That was well put in a review by Brian Switek of Donna Hart and Robert W Sussman's “Man the Hunted” :
Bullshit revisionism! How many paleontologist actually had a chance to examine the specimen? Were color pictures available on the net so others could compare the tooth to known early hominid teeth? It still wasn't some creotard that figured out it was a hoax. That was a trained professional. Own it.
Bullshit revisionism by who exactly? By this science blogger I quoted? You don’t have every opinion maker in your pocket. At any rate, not safely in your pocket.
theropod wrote:
Nope, it's a creationists that has no understanding of the methodology of science making all sorts of empty assertions with not one shred of empirical evidence in support thereof. Even when actual scientists tell you where, and how, you're fucking up you insist you know you're right. When faced with empirical evidence you ignore that too in favor of your made up stories you cannot support with anything but more empty assertions.
Well I do have some understanding of the methodology of science. I’ve been making quite a reasonable argument with some empirical evidence – for example, of the kind of damage other primates are capable of, using their teeth. You may be a scientist but you aren’t doing science on this forum, you are just having a discussion same as me.