Did the T-Rex live and hunt in packs?
BLM / Dr. Alan Titus
The research, reported both in the Smithsonian Magazine and in the prestigious journal Paleontology and Evolutionary Sciences started from the findings made in 2014 in the site called Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry by Dr. Alan Titus, a paleontologist of the BLM only currently, however, scholars have come to the conclusion that these carnivores were of social predators.
The findings of the site, located within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument constitute the first concrete evidence of a T-Rex "cemetery" in the United States. The site, and the resulting materials, are well preserved enough to support the hypothesis that these predators (of which you can buy a reproduction at this link) had a social lifestyle, with very similar habits, if we want to make a comparison. a little risky, to those of today's wolves or, if you want to follow the thought that they also fed on carrion, to hyenas.
According to doctor Philip Currie, traditional excavation techniques, assisted by the analysis of elements of rare earths, stable isotopes and coal concentrations, convincingly show the event of the collective demise at the Rainbows site of four or five tyrannosaurids. The collective death, which took place in circumstances yet to be clarified, once again confirms the social attitude of these carnivores.
We first talked about wolves or hyenas, but perhaps the most probable comparison for the social interactions of these animals, which we remember can easily weigh even seven tons, is perhaps that with birds, modern direct descendants of dinosaurs . Hunting yes, but also friendly behaviors between them, as in a group of cormorants, for example. But even 12 meters long!
BLM / Dr. Alan Titus
Joe Sertich, curator of the dinosaur section of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, and collaborator of the BLM, argues that this discovery is a real turning point for the study of the behavior of the most important group of carnivores of the Northern hemisphere during the Cretaceous period. Taken for granted this community lifestyle of theirs, we can imagine that the mass death of the Rainbows and Unicorns Quarry could have occurred following an event similar to a major landslide or a sudden flood.
The goal of researchers now is to find more of this social nature of the T-Rex. If already a single individual of this type of animal has managed to become the greatest source of problems in a hypothetical Jurassic Park, then imagine what could have happened if there had been a whole herd!
