{"id":18824,"date":"2017-01-06T06:27:52","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=18824"},"modified":"2017-01-06T06:27:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T06:27:52","slug":"cretaceous-footprints-show-dinosaurs-may-have-hunted-in-packs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/cretaceous-footprints-show-dinosaurs-may-have-hunted-in-packs.html","title":{"rendered":"Cretaceous footprints show dinosaurs may have hunted in packs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cretaceous footprints show dinosaurs may have hunted in packs<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Cretaceous footprints show dinosaurs may have hunted in packs:-<\/strong> Some 90 million years ago, three carnivorous dinosaurs sloshed through the mud, leaving footsteps still visible today. Now researchers have found clues hinting at the pack\u2019s intent: to grab dinner, in the form of a fellow dinosaur.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this idea is correct \u2013 and it\u2019s far from confirmed \u2013 the tracks could provide valuable evidence for cooperative hunting by tyrannosaurs, the family of meat-eating, hind-leg-walking reptiles headed by the mighty T. rex.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists have found fossils and other tracks suggesting dinosaurs hunted cooperatively, but evidence for dinosaur behavior \u201cis still relatively rare, because we\u2019re talking about something we can\u2019t see,\u201d says Brent Breithaupt, a Wyoming-based regional paleontologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. And whatever happened at this spot one day in the Cretaceous, \u201ctracks are the first good step \u2013 excuse the pun \u2013 into learning about what animals were there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The predator tracks were first discovered a decade ago in a rugged corner of New Mexico overseen by the land-management bureau. The researchers found 13 prints left by three meat-eating dinosaurs: small, medium and large.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proportions and shape of the three-toed prints point to tyrannosaurs as the culprits, says Douglas Wolfe of the White Mountain Dinosaur Exploration Center, who found the tracks. Fossils of a tyrannosaur-like dinosaur \u2013 a new species still under study — lie nearby, bolstering the case that the tracks are the footwork of tyrannosaurs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the tracks parallel each other, indicating \u201ca family group, maybe moving in concert,\u201d Wolfe says. What stumped him was the pattern of the tracks. The prints march across the ground in a relatively straight line. Then they suddenly change direction and veer off.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years ago, Douglas Wolfe\u2019s wife Hazel noticed something no one else had seen: a round footprint exactly where the tyrannosaur tracks swerve. Little piles of sediment hint the round-footed animal kicked up sand as it scrambled away.<\/span><\/p>\n

The maker of the round track was probably a plant-eating horned dinosaur of the Triceratops family, Douglas Wolfe says. One candidate is Zuniceratops, a smallish horned dinosaur. Wolfe thinks the tyrannosaurs closed in on the horned dinosaur\u2019s right side before their quarry fled. The Wolfes reported their findings at a recent meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.<\/span><\/p>\n

A joint tyrannosaur attack may seem far-fetched, but dinosaurs were not the loners of the popular imagination. At one Canadian site, a collection of fossils from tyrannosaurs of different ages suggests the animals died together, says James Kirkland of the Utah Geological Survey. \u201cThese were sophisticated animals,\u201d Kirkland says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists not involved with the New Mexico find say it\u2019s too early to know its significance. Breithaupt calls the site \u201cintriguing\u201d but wonders whether the meat-eaters and the plant-eater actually crossed paths, rather than trekking across the same spot days or weeks apart. He\u2019d like to see more data, including digital imaging of the tracks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Douglas Wolfe says the animals would not all have left tracks if they hadn\u2019t shown up at the mud patch at roughly the same time. In any case, he says, it\u2019s useful simply to find prints of tyrannosaur-like animals: the tracks indicate tyrannosaurs once stalked this patch of ground in the Cretaceous, and that they did so in a herd.<\/span><\/p>\n

The set of tracks also \u201cshows there are many, many unique sites still out there\u201d waiting to be discovered, Breithaupt says. \u201cEach one of these sites has a different story \u2026 that will provide us with a better understanding of the life and times of the animals that were roaming around back in the Age of Dinosaurs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/2017\/01\/05\/jurassic-footprints-show-dinosaurs-may-have-hunted-packs\/96217224\/<\/span><\/div>\n

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