Hello again, everyone.

It perpetually perplexes me how we can look back in time to a certain point in our lives, and marvel at how long ago it was and how so much has changed in that interval; and, alternately (sometimes simultaneously), shake our heads in amazement at how fast the years flew by, challenged to believe that it has really been so long.

Surely I am not the only one who has experienced this paradox of retrospection? Ever since I became aware of the personal milestone marked by this particular year, this is the feeling I have had nearly every time I have spared a thought for this forum.

It was this exact time on this exact date exactly five years ago (1,826 calendar days, to be precise) that I made my very first post on The Gang Of Five, officially becoming an active member of an Internet forum for the first time in my life. It is an anniversary that I feel compelled, if not obliged, to commemorate, as this was truly a life-changing event for me, and I have you, the members of the GOF, who welcomed me with open arms into the friendliest and most compassionate online family I could imagine, to thank for it.

Looking back, it amazes me how a random, nostalgia-incited (and ultimately temporary) bout of obsession with an animated film franchise from my childhood led me to one of the nicest places on the Web, and started me on a journey that would profoundly change my life for the better. It was one of those unforeseeable life-changing turns of events that seem utterly improbable in retrospect.

When I first joined the forum, I was an intensely shy and cautious individual, unsure of how to approach people or interact with them. Five years later, I’m still timid and introverted, but not as severely so as before, and I have vastly more confidence in social situations and communicating with people. Granted, it’s hard for me to say how much of my growth over the past five years I can attribute directly to the GOF, but I’ll be a sharptooth’s uncle if it hasn’t been a significant factor.

Certainly The Gang Of Five has done more for my psychological health than any doctor ever did. Posts citing me in The Member Appreciation Thread and nominations I received for the GOF Awards were among the greatest self-esteem boosts I have ever received. It has given me opportunities to communicate with people from all over the world, bearing a myriad of opinions, worldviews, and backgrounds. I’ve made friends, learned how to open up to people, experimented with new social media like Facebook and Skype, and expanded my social life beyond what it ever was before. I’ve learned new skills and developed preexisting ones, tried new things and discovered new interests. Thanks to the GOF I have broadened my horizons immensely.

But it’s not just my own personal growth for which I owe the GOF a debt of gratitude. I am also thankful for all the opportunities the forum has given me to pay back the favor to some meager extent; the times when I was able to make a positive difference in the lives of other members, however minor or fleeting my impact may have been. Whether by reviewing stories, critiquing artwork, creating star day cards, sharing scientific knowledge, providing a chuckle via a humorous caption or quip, supplying stimulating conversation, or just offering kindness and sympathy, it has been my honor and my pleasure to be able to benefit my fellow GOF members. It brings me immense joy and fulfillment to know that someone’s day is just a little bit brighter because of something I have done, and that maybe I can be of some value to the world after all.

I wish I could say that my level of activity on the GOF has remained consistent for these past five years. Regretfully, over the last two years or so, I have been visiting the forum less and less. I’m not entirely sure why myself. Perhaps one factor was the declining activity of various other members on the forum with whom I was friends or otherwise connected. It’s also likely that I was wearing myself too thin focusing on certain activities (including artwork, reviewing, and RPing) that had started out as fun, spontaneous pastimes, but that had somehow developed into challenging chores that I found more stressful than enjoyable. I find it all rather depressing, knowing how much I once loved spending time here.

There is one thing I can promise you all, though: I don’t ever plan on breaking ties with the GOF. This forum, and the connections I have made with people here, are too precious to me. If anyone ever wants to talk to me, share something with me, ask me a question, or just check up on how I’m doing, just send me a message. I have my GOF account set up so that I should be notified by e-mail whenever a PM is sent to me, or a post is made in my “ask me” thread. In addition, I have posted my contact information in the relevant thread in the AM section. If you wish to hear from me, I will be at arm’s length. I hope to maintainóand even strengthenómy friendships on this forum for years to come.

Thank you to the GOF and all my fellow members, for five wonderful years, and all that you have done for me in that time.

Sincerely,

And Ducky wore that leaf over her nose for the next three days, until the after-effects of Spike's binge on the bean patch wore off.

Cera: "BELLY FLOP!"

Ducky (in water below): Oh, @#$%&*!

The LBT dinosaurs' latest method of self-defense against sharpteeth: yodeling.

Redtooth101 played Pterano too didn't he? And from I remember you played me and Pterano for a bit when I decided to up and leave the GOF for awhile, having us go in the Mysterious Beyond. I don't know if Redtooth was followed up on that one, or he just did his own thing with him. And you mean Rob/LBTfan13 when you say that right? Yeah, I haven't seen him around at all.

Yeah, LBTFan13 is the member I meant.

You really don't owe anyone here an explanation or anything for your lack of activity or response. RP and anything GOF related is supposed to be fun, not like work obligations.

Well, I really hope everyone else feels the same way, because clearly I still can't balance my GOF activity with my everyday life. Thanks for your faith in me, Amy.

Again, I definitely want to finish this rp and continue with you guys if people are still interested, but it not, I wonder if it would be a good idea to close this topic and start anew. Not necessarily have the same plot/format as before, but tweak things around to make it a little different/more structured if we need it. I've had one member say they left the RP because it got too confusing where everyone was and how it was going. And I can see their point. If I didn't have the history of this RP and people like you Pangaea to back up the history on this, I'd be lost.

I have to say I'm reluctant to just restart the RP. I feel like I've been working on my characters and their stories for too long, and honestly I wouldn’t know what to do if we were to start again from square one (assuming I had the time or energy to invest in doing so). To put it bluntly, I probably wouldn’t be able to continue participating in the RP, and we’d have to find a new GM.

*I think the muncesting (players playing the characters among and with themselves) should be taken down a notch. From my experience in rp, while muncest can happen and still will happen depending on the circumstances of the characters, it really isn't all that fun (and very predictable) if you rp one character and then another major character. It makes it seem like you just want a certain result to go your way. I'll take me for an example.
Now, I love Pterano, and when I was going through my obsessive Pterano faze, I would have wanted to ship myself or something with him, and if I had rped him, I could make sure that would be exactly what happened. But it wouldn't be any fun for anyone else that wanted to rp with Pterano or my character if I just mostly focused on that. This is pretty much why I declined taking Pterano as a character before.

Makes sense to me. It will probably be harder to tone it down in my case, however: reflecting on my own history within the RP, a considerable proportion of my posts consisted of interactions among my own characters. It’s probably because I’m just so stinkin’ awkward interacting with other players (a lot of my past player-to-player interaction posts I find downright embarrassing), and it was so hard for me to get involved in other players’ activities that I turned to entertaining myself with my own characters. I did have fun doing it, but I may be an unusual case.

*Changing species I think can get a little confusing for other players to keep track and should only happen when it's absolutely necessary. (Like maybe a character faces something, goes through a change and the player can choose to change the species.) Or something like that. Especially if people seem to just be changing species back and forth without warning. It just gets confusing and people end up wondering who is who.

I definitely agree on this. I think another reason I'm such a poor GM is that I'm so reluctant to say "no" to players who ask if they can do something like change their dinosona species. It's part of my personal phobia of turning into (or being seen as) a control freak.

*I wonder if there should be some predestined fate thing for our characters. Not really a prophecy. Like we put ourselves, ocs, etc through certain situations in order to have them grow (hence why I think it would be a good idea to only change species if it's earned or needed). Again, I'll use my character as an example.
The thing my character seems to have the most trouble with is authenticity, knowing when to give certain information, letting people in, and when to hold back information when it's necessary. She's had some issues in the past that has made her reluctant to expose *exactly* how she feels. She tries to be honest, but sometimes her pride and anxiety can get the best of her. So in a way, I demoted my character to a more realistic species to her personality. A flyer would just be too easy of a choice, that's what she would want, but that's not necessarily what she is.

In case it's not obvious already, I'm terrible at characterization, and even worse at character development. In reflection, I don't think I've ever taken the RP seriously enough, story wise; for me it was just a chance to put my character in the LBT world and have some carefree fun. (I enjoyed RPing because it was far more socially engaging than just writing a fanfic, and far less predictable.) I never considered character development or an overly premeditated plot to be all that important, since I figured we were all just entertaining ourselves, not trying to create a story for others to read. (Wow, would it even be possible for me to sound more ignorant or naive? )

I have had a lot of fun in this RP, both before and after I became its GM, and I would never want to change that, but I think now that when I first joined this RP, I had a poor idea of what RPing entailed. The fact that the RP seemingly hit its current, player-repellantly glacial pace when I took over as GM and started attempting to design and manage subplots reinforces my feelings that I am no good at running an RP effectively.

*Limit the amount of ocs and characters people play. Again, this mostly is under the whole muncest thing, we really should only play the characters we can handle. And while I would love to put an oc in this rp or any really (I have one in the works I'm REALLY excited about putting out there) I want to be sure that I would have as limited contact with them as possible. And this of course would depend on how many people are actually playing the game.

Again, this makes sense to me. I feel like I've spread myself thin playing so many characters in so many places. The problem is, again, that I am reluctant to just drop any of the characters I am now juggling, both because I've become so personally attached to them, and because they're all involved in the currently ongoing subplots in one way or another.

There is idea on one game I played on a journal site. What would happen is when a character comes in the game, they would progress, age, and whatever during the game, but if they went home, they would just go back to the time they entered the game and watch themselves make the usual choices outside the game like they're watching their life like a movie.

I don't know if that makes any sense, but I think that would be an interesting way to portray our characters and just have them have deja vu moments where they go, "Wow, I really made those choices, when I could have done this instead." That's how I'm going to play my self insert anyway.

Sorry, I'm having another one of my "stupid" moments here… …I don't think I understand the concept you're describing.

Thanks, seriously, you've been an amazing help organizing this game and letting people know what's what.

You’re welcome. I still feel like I’m the slowest, least efficient, most negligent GM ever, so it’s nice (and pretty surprising) to hear that someone thinks well of me.

Good day, just wondering if I can join back in because I've missed doing this RP with you all.

I don't think you ever officially left the RP, so certainly you can come back. Your last "regular" post was here, then it looks like you tried starting over again here. All I know is that you're in the Great Valley.

Man, I would love to make a comeback here. Even if it's just once a day to post here. This was the first site I've joined after all. If this is still going on, I'm onboard. Question is where am I? I'm with the Big Water group right?

Actually it looks like you're still in the Great Valley. That's just as well for you, since the Big Water subplot isn't going anywhere fast.

If you need somebody to replace the members that aren't active anymore, I'd be willing to give it a try... I'd need somebody to tell me what's going on in the RP though so my posts make sense and aren't out of context

Sure, Ducky123, you're welcome to join. Only if you think it’s something you’ll enjoy doing, though. I wouldn’t want you to join just to help keep the RP afloat.

It’s been so long since I actually posted in the RP that I’ll need to check for myself of which characters are still being played at the moment and who is currently interacting with whom. I know that most of the characters are in the Great Valley at this point, except for one group who is traveling to the Big Water.

Sorry if this isn’t very helpful. Please tell me if you’re looking for more specific information on the RP.

I went to see this movie twice, and it vastly exceeded all of my expectations. Outstanding music, gorgeous animation, the best plot twists I could have asked for, a comic relief character who was far less annoying than I had feared, and above all, the two female lead characters, Anna and Elsa. I don't believe I've indicated it before on the forum, but I feel very strongly about movies and other media having good female characters and avoiding/subverting gender stereotypes and clichÈs, and Frozen was exemplary in this category.

Any more in-depth explanation would be a minefield of spoilers, but suffice to say I highly recommend this movie. If it's still out in theaters where you are, Rat_lady7, I think you should definitely see it. I strongly suspect you would enjoy it immensely.

Wow. I can't believe it's been a quarter of a century since the original release of The Land Before Time.

Thank you, LBT. You were one of the mostóif not THE mostóinfluential films of my childhood, and I can't imagine how my life would be different today had it not been for you. From my outlook on dinosaur-centric fiction, to the GOF and all the friends I've made on itóI owe it all to you. To Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Spike, Petrie, and yes, even you, Sharptooth (and all the other charactersóliving, dead, named, and namelessóin between): thanks for everything, guys.

Happy 25th birthday, LBT.

Welcome back, Erika! I was wondering what had happened to you.

I am also engaged now, and planning a wedding, as well as working on an art portfolio so that I can hopefully get a job in the animation or game design field when I finish my contract.

Congratulations!

I'd love to see any new artwork you might have to share.

A few more random gems from my family:

My sister: Ah, bacon. Glory in pig form.

–

My older younger brother: (*to me*) You are a very prestigious mongoose.

–

My older younger brother: When it’s raining buffaloes, you don’t want to go outside.

Me: (*chuckling*) Words of wisdom.

My older younger brother: In fact, you should probably go to a bomb shelter.

*cue me cracking up*

Remember the days when I used to answer questions? Yeah, me neither.

I'm sure it's obvious by now that your favorite science subject is biology or palaeontology. My question is, what are your thoughts on something like physics?

(The reason I'm asking is because my favorite science subject is physics and astronomy while I was never any good in biology, and I've got the suspicion that your interests may be the exact opposite of mine. Not that it's a bad thing in any way, I can assure you. )

Physics is one of those subjects that I find intriguing, but not quite to the point that I want to research it fervently. I love watching physics demonstrations, and I always enjoy the physics explanations given on MythBusters (which, incidentally, is where I picked up most of what I know about physics). I honestly wish I had a broader knowledge of physics, but I don’t think there’s enough room in my head.

Pangaea, have you watched Extreme Dinosaurs?      

Short answer: no. (Not sure if you’ll ever see this response anyway. )

I  read a very interesting thing about a dinosaur called Homalocephale.The strange thing about the bones of this species is the unusually wide hips.Some asume it as a protection from impacts,while others think that this dino were viviparous.Yep,instead of eggs,viviparous.This sound very strange to me becose I haven't heard about dinosaurs being  viviparous before.(also,for me it's strange that if all of them had those hips,than why males needed those if the viviparous theory is true.Maybe all specimen found were female,or even males had smaller,but still large hips compared to others,but still it sounds weird for me.)What do you think about this theory?Do you think that it can be true?Also,have you ever heard about viviparous dinosaurs before?

I think I vaguely recall hearing about the idea that pachycephalosaurs (and I think sauropods too) were viviparous or ovoviviparous. It is an interesting subject to ponder, considering how many times viviparity and ovoviparity have independently evolved in vertebrates, from sharks, to bony fish, to amphibians, to lizards, to snakes, to synapsids. Birds are one of the few exceptions, probably at least partly because it’s easier to fly when not burdened with developing offspring, though I’ve also heard that anatomical constraints may be a factor; namely, the structure of the avian eggshell and uterus, which supposedly would make oxygen exchange within the parent’s body virtually impossible. Also, according to one book I’ve read (The Complete Dinosaur, Second Edition), archosaurs may have been evolutionary “canalized into obligate oviparity” due to their unique reproductive tract. You see, in most oviparous amniotes, eggs remain stationary in the uterus as each set of membranes, and ultimately the outer shell, forms around them sequentially. Archosaurs, however, have a uterus structured like an assembly line: the eggs are constantly moving, with different regions of the uterus depositing membranes and shells around them as they pass through. The argument is that this system precludes eggs from being retained within the uterus for any length of time, and so ovoviparity or viviparity could never evolve in an archosaur.

Admittedly, I have some reservations about this hypothesis: First, if there’s anything I’ve learned about evolution, it’s that it’s far more creative and resourceful than we humans can imagine or predict
(although it must be said that I know very little about the biology of viparity, and if I understood it better I might be more convinced of these projected limitations). Second, although all living crocodilians (the only other surviving archosaurs besides birds) lay eggs, they have a system of laying large numbers of small eggs (from 20 to more than 100) at once, whereas most birds produce smaller clutches over a period of several days (for example, the snowy owl lays one egg every two days or so, for a total clutch size of three to eleven eggs or even more, depending on the availability of food). As for dinosaurs, both methods were evidently used: sauropods laid eggs en masse, while troodontids laid them sequentially. Until I am further enlightened on the evolution of ovoviparity and the limitations of the crocodilian reproductive tract, the fact that crocodilians evidently retain their eggs within their bodies for at least a brief period of time implies to me that there is some potential for ovoviparity to evolve, which may also hold true for dinosaurs…maybe. Third, there was a group of Mesozoic crocodylomophs, the metriorhynchids, that were highly specialized for marine life. The Mesozoic’s other major marine reptile groupsóichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaursóare all conclusively known to have been live-bearers, but no such evidence is available for metriorhynchids, so it’s not known whether they crawled ashore to lay eggs like sea turtles or if they had overcome the supposed restrictions of the archosaurian assembly-line uterus and evolved live birth. If it is the latter, then the possibility that some dinosaurs could have been viviparous or ovoviparous would seem more plausible (though it would not prove that any of them actually were).

An alternative explanation for the wide hip canal of pachycephalosaurs like Homalocephale is that it would have allowed for a longer, roomier digestive tract. Pachycephalosaur teeth and jaws were poorly equipped for chewing, so a longer gut would presumably have been advantageous for helping them digest their food as thoroughly as possible and make the most of its nutritional content.

I have not been able to find any information on pachycephalosaur eggs; it could be that none have yet been discovered. Pachycephalosaurs themselves are known mostly from their skull domes; very few body fossils have been found, so they are rather poorly known compared to other dinosaur groups. I haven’t heard live-bearing discussed seriously among paleontologists as a possibility for pachycephalosaurs, and for that reason I personally doubt it myself, but there does not yet seem to be any concrete evidence either for or against this hypothesis (None that I know about, anyway). In summary, I think it’s unlikely that pachycephalosaurs were viviparous or ovoviviparous, but I don’t believe it is impossible that they were.

So this is a debate my boyfriend and I have every time we end up talking about dinosaurs. Basically:
Him: Deinoncyus can take down a tyrannosaurus rex. They work in packs, are fast, and are smart. It would be like wolves attacking a really big moose.

Me: No they couldn't. Tyrannosaurus could crush them like bugs. Yes, deinonychus are smart, but smart enough to know that they should stay the f*** away from tyrannosaurus rex. They know they would get their tails handed to them. I can imagine they'd attack a small one, but not a fully grown adult! It's what they did with sauropods-attack the small ones. (I never brought this up to him, realizing it later, that wolves don't hunt healthy moose, but elderly/sick/wounded moose. They'd be crazy to go after a healthy one.) And as thick as their claws are, I'm not sure they can get through a T-Rex enough to kill it.

This came up yesterday at a restaurant and I even asked the waiter his opinion. He agreed with my boyfriend.

But since you're so full of dinosaur knowledge, I was wondering about your opinion.

Well, even ignoring the fact that Deinonychus and Tyrannosaurus lived more than 30 million years apart and never could have encountered one another, I seriously doubt that a group of Deinonychus (or equivalently sized period-appropriate dromaeosaurs) would chance attacking a fully grown T. rex under anything approximating normal circumstances.

To envision how such a scenario would play out realistically, I don’t think it’s as important to consider whether the dromaeosaurs could do it, but whether they would do it. Sure, a pack of dromaeosaurs could kill a T. rex if it just stood there and did nothing to fight back, or if it had fallen and broken its neck, but attacking a healthy adult Tyrannosaurus fully capable of defending itself? That goes against just about every rule in the predator’s playbook.

It’s true that many predators will attack prey larger than themselves at times, and not necessarily only weak individuals (though those do make easier targets), but because of the inherent risk of injury, they will usually only do so if they have some sort of advantage over the prey. For example, a pack of wolves may occasionally attack a healthy adult moose, but they will probably first engage it in a prolonged chase to tire it out, allowing for an easier kill. Or it could be a matter of strategy, whether simply ambushing the prey and attacking its weak spot, or progressively learning over time (even generations) the most efficient way to hunt a certain prey item.

Predator-prey conflicts in nature are seldom anything like the head-to-head, videogame-style battles many people imagine them to be. Nor were dinosaurs supernaturally powerful, dragon-like juggernauts with some magical ability to destroy anything they sunk their pointy appendages into. As magnificent and fascinating as dinosaurs were, they were still animals, and even the most formidable among them would have had the same self-preservation instincts and predatory pragmatism as any of their present-day counterparts.

For the record, I shouldn’t think the Deinonychus would have a problem penetrating a tyrannosaur’s hide; studies of tooth marks on Tenontosaurus bones suggest that the bite force of Deinonychus was stronger than that of a spotted hyena, and in fact it may have been their jaws rather than their claws that were their primary killing tool. If dromaeosaurs did use their sickle claws for killing, then they probably would have targeted the throat, where a slash or puncture wound would be the most lethal. When dealing with large prey, it’s in a predator’s best interest to avoid a drawn-out struggle (again, because of the risk of injury). A precision strike that quickly kills or cripples the prey is usually the best option. Even a prey animal that has been mortally wounded may still be able to fight back or flee (I saw one video of a zebra whose belly was torn open by a crocodile while crossing a river, but it still made it to land and escaped, though it probably died later), but severing the arteries, spine, or windpipe (or, in the case of the latter, constricting it or otherwise preventing air from reaching the lungs) will put a struggling animal out of commission almost immediately. If you were to examine the killing styles of all predatory tetrapods that hunt other vertebrates capable of wounding them, you would find that most employ some variation of this technique to some extent. Cats, weasels, and falcons break their prey’s necks. Crocodiles drown their prey. Cheetahs clamp antelopes’ windpipes shut. Polar bears crush seals’ skulls. Pythons constrict their prey’s lungs. Wolves bite moose in areas that bleed out rapidly, and sometimes attempt to clamp their muzzles closed. And so on.

Another rule of thumb for most hunters is to be economical. Since many hunts end in failure even at the best of times, predators choose targets that they perceive as taking the least amount of effort to bring down with the greatest payout of food. (Even an ambush predator such as an angel shark will pass up a fish that swims within striking distance if it is too large to swallow, as hilariously demonstrated at 22:33 in this documentary, where an oblivious halibut settles down right on top of a camouflaged angel shark. ) From a dromaeosaur’s perspective, a T. rex may be an enormous source of meat, but it is also such a powerful and dangerous creature that there is a high probability that the attack will be unsuccessful, and potentially even fatal. The mere presence of such an enormous carnivore would imply that there is enough food in the vicinity to sustain it (unless the encounter occurs during a famine), in which case there is bound to be easier prey for the dromaeosaurs to take their chances with.

There’s also the size difference to consider. Estimating dinosaur mass appears to be an incredibly tricky and debatable business, but all figures I have seen for Deinonychus’s weight fall between 100 and 200 pounds (mostly 150–160 pounds), while estimates for Tyrannosaurus range from 4 to 9 tons. Even if you assume a high-end weight for Deinonychus and a low-end weight for T. rex, the Deinonychus would be taking on a creature 40 times their weight. By comparison, the average wolf weighs 50–100 pounds, while moose fall between 400 and 1,800 pounds. Even a worst-case scenario for the wolvesóa pack of 50-pounders going after a record-pushing mooseówould have closer weight ratios than the aforementioned large Deinonychus attacking a small T. rex.

There’s another present-day case of predators collaborating to bring down enormous prey that may be even more comparable to the Deinonychus vs. Tyrannosaurus scenario: The Savuti lions of Botswana, a population that specializes in hunting elephants. (This behavior was famously featured in an episode of the BBC natural history series Planet Earth; if you’ve never seen it, watch it here, though perhaps not if you’re easily disturbed.) There are several caveats, however. First and foremost, these lions have developed specialized elephant-hunting techniques over the last few decades; they started with calves, and have “graduated” over the years to hunting subadults, and eventually fully grown elephants. Nearly all of their hunts take place at night, when the lions have a major sight advantage over the elephants. They also seem to employ psychological scare tactics, roaring in the dark to panic their prey into fleeing, whereupon the pride can attack the elephant from behind, forcing it to the ground and killing it. And finally, elephants are fairly abundant animals in the lions’ environment; a massive food source that few other predators can take advantage of. Even in 1990, researchers estimated that elephant accounted for 20% of the Savuti lions’ diet, a percentage which has probably risen since then. By comparison, Tyrannosaurus rex, an apex predator in its environment, would have been quite rare, so there wouldn’t be many individuals for dromaeosaurs to practice hunting; given their position in the food web, they would have been less inclined to flee from a much smaller foe; and their senses were probably comparable to those of dromaeosaurs, or at the very least dromaeosaur night vision was nowhere near as superior to tyrannosaurs’ as lions’ night vision is to elephants’.

And there’s one more reason why the argument of the wolves hunting moose and lions hunting elephants does not apply to the scenario of Deinonychus attacking T. rex: as big and powerful as moose and elephants are, they are still herbivores. Certainly herbivores can be extremely dangerous (indeed, I cannot emphasize enough that the common perception of “herbivore = peaceful/harmless” is utterly, grievously wrong), they do not make a living by killing. Predators are natural assassins: everything about themótheir bodies, their senses, their reflexes, and the skills they learn throughout lifeóare honed for dispatching other animals as quickly and efficiently as possible. Every time they feed (assuming scavenging or kleptoparasitism is not involved), they must put these skills and tools into practice, while at the same time running the risk of injury or death at the proverbial hands of their prey. Naturally, most are equally adept at utilizing their natural arsenals in self-defense. A pack of Deinonychus that dared to attack a Tyrannosaurus would be taking on a highly proficient killer with a massive size advantage and perhaps two decades of hunting experience (the amount of time T. rex is thought to have taken to reach full size). With the possible exception of a large ankylosaur or giant sauropod, that’s just about the most hazardous prey they could choose to tackle, if you ask me. :blink:

I could imagine a group of dromaeosaurs mobbing a big tyrannosaur, motivating it to move elsewhere (much as small birds will harass a bird of prey or some rodents will drive off snakes), and maybe a particularly large and persistent bunch could even pester one to the point that it abandons its kill and lets them have it, but as far as attacking a T. rex as prey, unless it was extremely weak or wounded, and the dromaeosaurs were absolutely desperate, I can’t see it happening.