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First Fossil Evidence That Velociraptors Hunted in Packs
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The New Scientist reports that palaeontologists have excavated a fossil trackway in Shandong Province in China 100 to 120 million years old that contains footprints left by six Dromeosaurs, the more formal name for raptors, showing evidence of group behavior. Up until now, the popular stereotype from Jurassic Park of raptors hunting in packs has had no fossil evidence to back it up. The paths of the six 90 kilo raptors do not overlap where the animals walked alongside a river or stream. '"The odds of these tracks being made by different individuals that just happen to be moving in the same direction, without their tracks stepping on one another, are small," said Jerry D. Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College. "Groups that do that usually have relatively sophisticated behavior, and they're relatively intelligent," Harris added. "By moving together in groups, it's entirely possible that they hunted in groups."'"
Who needs fossil evidence? Just watch the movie. See? Packs.
(I hope this doesn't get in the way of my thrice-weekly xkcd entertainment.)
let the XKCD references begin
seriously, i wish God would stop planting 'evidence' of dinosaurs, this is getting rather tiresome.
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
They were obediently following Adam and Eve around, and it was only 6000 years ago. Blasphemers!
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
so velociraptors may have been pack hunters? thanks for the nightmares.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Nah... The movie that comes to my mind is completely different.
I am getting a picture of very clean cut, tall, dainty and somewhat immortal lithe man (with bow strapped across back, of course) darting back and forth across the plain. He sniffs here, looks there, describing what the signs indicate happened (all while you're seeing flashbacks to millions of years ago where the pack of raptors were hauling tail across the terrain with two little midget dinos tied to a couple raptors' backs because some dark T-Rex said "don't eat them".
That's some tracker...
Now all we need to find is some evidence of raptors being able to open up doors, and we'll have proof that Hollywood knows more about Dinosaurs than Science.
Gamertag: WyleType
is the number of slashdotters that simultaneous think they should attempt to post something witty using this number.
sigs... don't talk to me about sigs....
"Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this "six foot turkey" as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex, he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two 'raptors you didn't even know were there. Because Velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today. And he slashes at you with this... a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no no. He slashes at you here... or here... or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect.
"
Sure baby, I'll give you my phone number...in Hex
.. with lots of free time and a sense of humor. :|
If they were so amazingly smart as to know that humans would come along a few tens of million years after their time, yet stupid enough to worry about it.... Nah, I think I'll discount that idea.
"The paths of the six 90 kilo raptors do not overlap where the animals walked alongside a river or stream. '"The odds of these tracks being made by different individuals that just happen to be moving in the same direction, without their tracks stepping on one another, are small," said Jerry D. Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College."
Wow, they must really be smart. They travel single-file, to conceal their number.
Well, it's not planted as such. At some point the great game designer in the sky thought it would be fun to have some big stuff running around the high level areas. And some 90 kilo birds that He planned to use later as the Blood Elves' mount.
But you know how that ends up working. You tweak a little here, a little there, and next thing you know they're whining that you've nerfed them to death and start cancelling their subscriptions in droves.
So, you know, cut Him some slack. What do you expect Him to do? Hide that they ever existed? Like that ever works. Try deleting just a post or two on a board and you end up with a whole rebellion on your hand. Try denying that the game ever had dinosaurs? Ooer... noone does... ermm...
Well, OK, so Sony's propaganda machine does try to present the new animal breeding on SWG like some revolutionary new feature, and not, say, like they had animal handlers in the first place and they removed them.
But I figure God is better than Sony, you know? (Ok, ok, so that's not hard to achieve;) He's not affraid to admit that some things weren't that well balanced in the first place and had to be changed.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is rediculous. Have you ever tried to play 3on3 without anybody's paths crossing?
For that matter, what are the chances that six raptors with beers would be able to walk a straight line?
You clearly need to put more thought into your hypotheses before you present them. Now go and completely rewrite this paper.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
No need to travel to a new place. Simply travel back in time 100 million years.
It was already known that Dinosaurs were sociable animals. They are still alive in a special place. It is called Congress.
Yeah, this just establishes that they died in packs; perhaps also that they had cults and poor judgment.
And this one as well.
Wake me up when there's fossil evidence that Jesus had a pet dinosaur.
It goes way beyond that. This proves that they were marching 6 abreast. If some were walking behind the others, the footprints would still have overlapped. The theory of caveman dinosaur cavalry formations has never had any fossil evidence ... until now!
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Fortunately, the difficulty in obtaining the dinosaur DNA and SGI workstations is more than compensated for by the ease of finding a smart ass obese slovenly IT guy...
Those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were NOT "raptors", but more closely resembled the deinonycus.
Velociraptors were smaller, and had longer, crocodile like jaws.
This has been annoying the crap out of me since Jurrasic Park first came out.
Well, not Jesus, but in the book of Daniel, you can read about a dragon called Bel in Babylon:
1:23 Now there was a large dragon, and the Babylonians used to revere it. 1:24 The king said to Daniel, "Surely you can't claim that this is not a living god. So worship it!" But Daniel replied, "I will worship the Lord my God alone, for he is the living God. 1:26 But, O king, if you will grant me authority I will put the dragon to death using neither sword nor staff." The king replied, "I grant you authority."
Most of the dragon stories (and most stories about other gods) were excised from the Bible by King James, but this one slipped through.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!