T-rex: Predator or Scavenger

[Chomper98]

In your opinion, do you think T-rex was the predator we all imagine, or just a big vulture? When I say predator, I mean that if he is hungry, he will go out and kill, though if he does come across a carcass he will eat it.

[Blais_13]

In my opinion it was an opportunist.It  would feast on carcasses,but it had the "gear" to kill large preys too.Also,I think there were an edmontosaurus fossil that showed injuri caused by t-rex that healed,which suggest that it was an active predator too.Of course we an't tell 100% sure that it was caused by t-rex,but if paleontologists say it looks like it was,the that's enough for me.Also it had a good vision for deepnes,a commo thing in predators.

[StrutEggStealer]

I agree with you, Blais - T. Rex was a basic killing machine from sheer bulk and headgear alone. I actually just watched a documentary on this recently, and the paleontologists were discussing how T Rex - just because its teeth were big - did not mean it was a deadly predator.

IDK, I know T. Rex wasn't that fast or anything (15-20 mph tops), but neither was its top meal - Tricerotops. Right there makes a perfect connection.
And certainly, if there' something dead, a predator's gonna have himself a free meal^^

[DarkHououmon]

I voted for both scavenger and predator. There is evidence of tyrannosaurus being a hunter. It is also unlikely that it never scavenged; most predators nowadays do also scavenge. So it would make sense for tyrannosaurus to scavenge if need be.

[Malte279]

Or hunt if need be
Perhaps they were similar to lions nowadays who often enough chase other hunters away from the prey the other hunters made. Not like dinosaurs (outside of LBT of course) are in any way more likely to make any more "ethical considerations" about their food than most other animals do. In any case it would be dead funny to see something the size of a T-Rex try such hide, sneak and sudden strike attacks such as we see from Cheetahs for example.
"I'm sure this tall grass with totally veil my sneaky approach as I tiptoe my tons of body closer to those leafeaters over there..."

[StarfallRaptor]

Well, maybe the tall grass was taller back then!  Maybe it would have worked if they hid!

[Chomper98]

Well, maybe the tall grass was taller back then!  Maybe it would have worked if they hid!

There was no grass in the dinosaur age, though trees like redwoods dominated the planet, perhaps they could conceal a 20 foot tall, 40 feet long Tyrannosaur.

[Pangaea]

No offense to anybody, but as far as the paleontological community is concerned, this is a dead horse argument. Even Jack Horner, the paleontologist who publicized the hypothesis that T. rex might have been an obligate scavenger, doesn't believe it anymore (if he ever did so in the first place). It was never a valid scientific theory; Horner never actually did the research on T. rex remains to back up his hypothesis. More than likely, he popularized the idea just to get people to think outside the box about T. rex's life habits, or even for the publicity (He has been quoted as stating that he sometimes broached the subject just to be contrary and to get his colleagues arguing). And for the record, another paleontologist eventually did do an evaluation of T. rex's anatomy, and found that none of Horner's claims about Tyrannosaurus being physically ill-suited for predation stacked up. In short, everyone agrees that our favorite sharptooth would have scavenged whenever palatable carrion was available, and hunted when it wasn't, just like any other terrestrial carnivore.

Again, forgive me if I sound annoyed, aggressive, or like I'm trying to censor the discussion (I promise I'm not). All I can say is, to anyone who's still wondering about this subject, read this article. If it's anything to go by, paleontologists are tired of hearing the "T. rex: hunter or scavenger" question, and very keen on spreading the word that it's not something people have to debate anymore.

Well, maybe the tall grass was taller back then! Maybe it would have worked if they hid!

There was no grass in the dinosaur age, though trees like redwoods dominated the planet, perhaps they could conceal a 20 foot tall, 40 feet long Tyrannosaur.

Actually, in 2005, paleontologists discovered phytolithsófragments of silica uniquely found in grassópreserved inside titanosaur dung from the late Cretaceous of India. So evidently grass of some form did exist at least at the end of the Mesozoic, though I don't know if there's any evidence that there were grassy fields like we have today, or if they were more like bamboo thickets (bamboo itself being a giant, woody grass). In any case, there surely must have been some kind of plant that filled the role of grass back in the Mesozoic, so you're certainly right that there would have been something for ambush predators to hide in.

Source:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8336...ml#.UfeIqBZhung

[Ghostfishe]

What Pangaea said. I remember someone commented a while back in a conversation on (IIRC) another forum, saying that they had actually talked to Horner... and they basically said that, though Horner still supports his theory, he doesn't really seem to believe it anymore. Interesting if true.

A lot of Horner's arguments never made sense to me, anyways... the "plodding giant" argument is silly because that's how I'd describe most of T. rex's prey, too. A balance of power has to be maintained in order for the foodchain to remain stable, so something would actually be wrong with the "big picture" if T. rex looked capable of taking down everything in its environment and then some. Look how often lions' hunts fail, for instance... no confirmed predator that we can observe today has a 1/1 or even 1/2 success ratio, it usually boils down to something like 1/20, even for obligate carnivores like the big cats. Lions (rexes) get outrun by zebras (hadrosaurs), may be charged and/or gored by buffalo (ceratopsains), and are nowhere near capable of taking down gazelles (ostrich-dinos) or elephants (sauropods). They still manage, though.

They have found evidence of T. rex eating the more "undesirable" parts of carcasses, eg. that Triceratops pelvis, but that's also kind of silly to use as evidence that it wasn't a hunter. Gray wolves will eat every part of a deer carcass, down to the hooves, not because they're "desperate scavengers" but because they're just very, very efficient at processing carcasses, including the ones they brought down themselves. It's just a matter of anatomy; other predators, like big cats, aren't equipped with the right "tools". T. rex was.

I have no doubt that T. rex scavenged whenever possible. Any smart animal will, if it has the stomach for it--it's a free source of nutrients with no risk that the owner is going to gore you, stab you with pointy hooves, etc. Heck, even giraffes, sheep, cows and deer have been known to munch on bones, roadkill, and even live birds (like grouse and poultry) when they can get them.

I also have no doubt that T. rex hunted sick and injured prey whenever possible. I don't even see why that would be a question, or would be read into as making T. rex a "weak" hunter, since this is extremely common and logical behavior in many modern predators (eg. lions, wolves)... and we do not think of them as "weak" hunters at all.