Questions for forensic paleontologists: inquiring minds want to know!
1) Were carnivorous lady dinosaurs social creatures, babysitting one another's eggs and young, thereby vastly increasing all their chances of genetic survival? How could one go about getting an answer to this question?
2) How did the average carnosaur avoid massive dental disease? Munching on cycads, the way we and some other carnivorous mammals do (I've seen cats do it; I don't know about dogs), spitting it out afterward (carnosaurs almost certainly could not have processed all that fiber properly, and would have ended up with it blocking their guts, which were tailored for digesting and assimilating meat but not much more than that beyond the contents of the stomachs of the herbivores they ate, ultimately killing them via diverticulosis and peritonitis )? Mesozoic, dental equivalents of dik-dik birds, the symbiotic rhino birds that clean their hosts' bodies of parasites and thereby earn transportation all over the veldt? How did they minimize disease in general -- eating herbs, salt licks, establishment of the right microbes and other symbiotes in and on their bodies? How to answer these questions?
In both cases, clearly enough of each species of carnivorous dinosaurs survived or avoided all sorts of potentially lethal calamities to live to feed, fight, run, and breed another day, or else they wouldn't have been around as long as they were (208-65 million years BC). How did they manage to hold their numbers up in the face of inimical microbes and endoparasites swarming everywhere in that very warm environment (which the Mesozoic was, much warmer, on average, than our time, which is an interglacial waiting for a new Ice Age to happen to it), just perfect for the proliferation of microbes and parasites of all kinds? Would their skeletons reveal traces of, say, cycads in their crops? Would their teeth show wear and tear from gnawing such rough, indigestible material which, nevertheless, was the perfect tooth-cleaner (when dik-dik whatsises weren't available, anyway?
Anybody who knows something about this, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
2) How did the average carnosaur avoid massive dental disease? Munching on cycads, the way we and some other carnivorous mammals do (I've seen cats do it; I don't know about dogs), spitting it out afterward (carnosaurs almost certainly could not have processed all that fiber properly, and would have ended up with it blocking their guts, which were tailored for digesting and assimilating meat but not much more than that beyond the contents of the stomachs of the herbivores they ate, ultimately killing them via diverticulosis and peritonitis )? Mesozoic, dental equivalents of dik-dik birds, the symbiotic rhino birds that clean their hosts' bodies of parasites and thereby earn transportation all over the veldt? How did they minimize disease in general -- eating herbs, salt licks, establishment of the right microbes and other symbiotes in and on their bodies? How to answer these questions?
In both cases, clearly enough of each species of carnivorous dinosaurs survived or avoided all sorts of potentially lethal calamities to live to feed, fight, run, and breed another day, or else they wouldn't have been around as long as they were (208-65 million years BC). How did they manage to hold their numbers up in the face of inimical microbes and endoparasites swarming everywhere in that very warm environment (which the Mesozoic was, much warmer, on average, than our time, which is an interglacial waiting for a new Ice Age to happen to it), just perfect for the proliferation of microbes and parasites of all kinds? Would their skeletons reveal traces of, say, cycads in their crops? Would their teeth show wear and tear from gnawing such rough, indigestible material which, nevertheless, was the perfect tooth-cleaner (when dik-dik whatsises weren't available, anyway?
Anybody who knows something about this, please let me know. Thanks in advance.