D&D General Tyrannosaurs were pack hunters. Stay away from the Isle of Dread.

[Mind of tempest]

Rare indeed is the modern predator who won't do this, if the kill is reasonably fresh. Bullying others away from a kill isn't what differentiates predator from scavenger.

a cheap meal is a good meal has been true for as long as life has had the problem of hunger so of course, a large predator will scavenge whatever it can.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, the difference between predator and scavenger is less "Will it eat carrion?" and more "If there is no carrion, will it go out and make some?"

 

[Oofta]

I remember reading a short story in an old book (probably 50s) where people created a device to view the past.

They were quite surprised that all the dinosaurs they saw didn't look like what they expected. Bright colors, plumage on at least some. The point of the story was that we really have no clue.

Wasn't that long ago people had triceratops with sprawled out to the sides and T Rex had quite an upright position. Speed of a moving T Rex is still being debated.

We can only make educated guesses. Until someone invents a device that can see back in time anyway.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Coincidentally, yesterday Live Science came out with this. Basically, we can outrun a T rex...

Never mind outrunning a T. rex — you could probably outwalk it

New simulations calculated T. rex walking speed from the motion of its swaying tail.

www.livescience.com

 

[doctorbadwolf]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/04/19/grand-staircase-tyrannosaur/

I'm guessing the Isle of Dread -- which is crazy big, once you start counting hexes -- could probably handle one pack of T. Rexes. Still, that would be enough. I imagine their territory would be picked clean pretty quickly, requiring them to move in search of new prey periodically. The human tribes would likely have the migration timeline down to a near-science, as it would make hunting beyond the wall untenable while the pack was in the area.

I was thinking about this, and apologies if I repeat things others have said, and I wonder about T-Rex as a scavenging predator, like wolves. If they are, then difficult prey like humans would likely be avoided unless the pack is very hungry.

Then again, if T-Rex is the biggest meanest thing on the island, they likely stop being scavengers because they aren't fighting for prey as much.

Lastly I wonder more and more about how a rex could be tamed. If it is a highly social pack animal, it might be trainable like a hawk, and even capable of being bred into a more domesticable animal, like wolves were.

Them being pack hunters makes it much easier for me to imagine humanoids riding on little backpack style harnesses on the back of a rex that is many generations removed from it's wild cousin until it is the malamut to the wild rex's timber wolf.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Coincidentally, yesterday Live Science came out with this. Basically, we can outrun a T rex...

Never mind outrunning a T. rex — you could probably outwalk it

New simulations calculated T. rex walking speed from the motion of its swaying tail.

www.livescience.com

This seems like one of those things where you should immediately question the simulation, based on the size of rex vs other predators and of prey, and look at how successful a species it was, for how long.

I mean, it's possible that a pack hunting predator that may have been partly a scavenger was also quite slow, but it's unlikely enough that I wouldn't assume that such a simulation isn't missing something.

Edit: I should be more specific, actually. First, I'm not being fair to the scientists, but I am being fair to the article writer. Bad title, bad wording in the opening of the article, waits until the very end to point out what the likely running speed was, and the fact that the research could even show that Rex could run faster than we used to think, but using it's tail movements to dampen the shock of fast running on the animal's bones.

All that said, a fast human with good endurance likely could outrun a T. Rex, especially if they have obstacles that they can use to weave through and slow the giant beast down. No matter how good that tail is, that much mass doesn't turn on a dime!

In a jungle or forest, a fast humanoid that knows the terrain well enough to run through it without the terrain killing them, could escape a T. Rex and still have enough energy to make the day not a total waste.

 

[Sacrosanct]

This seems like one of those things where you should immediately question the simulation, based on the size of rex vs other predators and of prey, and look at how successful a species it was, for how long.

I mean, it's possible that a pack hunting predator that may have been partly a scavenger was also quite slow, but it's unlikely enough that I wouldn't assume that such a simulation isn't missing something.

Unless it's primary prey were also quite slow. Who knows. Maybe the triceratops just mosey'd along at a snail's pace lol.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Unless it's primary prey were also quite slow. Who knows. Maybe the triceratops just mosey'd along at a snail's pace lol.

Yeah, I also wrote that before finishing the article, which does note at the bottom that this data may actually mean that Rex could run faster than we thought, even though it's comfortable walking speed may have been slower.

I just wish they'd have more fun depicting dinos, and give them feathers!

 

[tomBitonti]

I wonder if we really have our conceptions properly centered. Is it possible that T-Rex was the equivalent of a carnivorous dung beetle, feasting on the carcasses of a large and rapidly turning over population of herbivores, and only occasionally opportunistically taking down injured or otherwise weakened prey?
TomB

 

[Dausuul]

I wonder if we really have our conceptions properly centered. Is it possible that T-Rex was the equivalent of a carnivorous dung beetle, feasting on the carcasses of a large and rapidly turning over population of herbivores, and only occasionally opportunistically taking down injured or otherwise weakened prey?
TomB

Paleontologists have found a number of examples of healed T-rex bite wounds on prey species (i.e., made while the prey animal was alive and able to escape), including one find where the T-rex had left a tooth embedded in a hadrosaur's tail and the bone healed around it.

So it's clear that T-rexes did hunt live prey, though it's also safe to say they would scavenge any time they got the chance, and they would prefer injured, sick, old, or juvenile prey to active healthy adults. That's true of pretty much any predator.

Among living vertebrates, the only obligate scavengers we know of are vultures. For other large carnivores, scavenging is a side hustle, not a full-time job.