Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey there,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff lor and vogel bomb here whoever. The human
Speaker 1: stars of the latest Jurassic Park movie are the velociraptors
Speaker 1: are the fan favorite performers. Packs of raptors can gang
Speaker 1: up on anyone or anything, from kids in kitchens to
Speaker 1: a hybridized dino monster. Their attacks are organized, strategic, and
Speaker 1: in most of the movies they rely on a chain
Speaker 1: of command within the group. But is such team oriented
Speaker 1: behavior supported by the fossil record. Before we can answer
Speaker 1: that question, we should clear something up. The dinosaur that's
Speaker 1: called Velociraptor in the Jurassic Park movies and novels was
Speaker 1: based on a completely different animal known as Dano nikus,
Speaker 1: and when it comes to size, there's a huge gap
Speaker 1: between the two. Velociraptor wasn't much bigger than a turkey,
Speaker 1: but the adult Dano nikes measured eleven feet or about
Speaker 1: three point three meters long and may have weighed more
Speaker 1: than two hundred pounds. That's both are classified as dromaeosaurids,
Speaker 1: a family of bird like carnivorous dinosaurs. Members of this
Speaker 1: group had a specialized toe on each foot, which famously
Speaker 1: was held in an upright position while they walked. In theory,
Speaker 1: that habit kept the large hook shaped claws on those
Speaker 1: digits nice and sharp. Historically, it was thought that these
Speaker 1: claws were slashing tools used to disembowel prey, but recent
Speaker 1: studies have found that the claws would have been better
Speaker 1: equipped for stabbing or puncturing Dremeosaurus. Therefore, it might have
Speaker 1: used their remarkable toes to help them cling on to
Speaker 1: large thrashing victims. Think of this as sort of a
Speaker 1: prehistoric rodeo. Getting back to Dana Nikus. This particular dinosaur
Speaker 1: was originally discovered in nineteen thirty one in Montana, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be named until nineteen sixty nine. That's when
Speaker 1: Yale paleontologist John Ostrom was overseeing a dig at a
Speaker 1: Montana quarry and the bones of four dino Nikes were
Speaker 1: found strewn around the partial skeleton of a much larger
Speaker 1: herbivore called Tanantosaurus. Late in his career, Ostrom compared this
Speaker 1: paleocrime scene to a wolf pack dispatching its prey. The
Speaker 1: four dead Dino Nikus dinos he theorized had been killed
Speaker 1: while attacking the big plant eater in a coordinated group effort. Later,
Speaker 1: other members of their pack presumably killed that tenacious dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Ostrom's work influenced author Michael Crichton, who wrote pack hunting
Speaker 1: Dromaeosaurus into the first Jurassic Park book. The concept has
Speaker 1: since taken hold of the public's imagination. Moreover, it's had
Speaker 1: a significant impact on dinosaurs science. Therapods, the group containing birds,
Speaker 1: and all known extinct carnivorous dinos, are often found fossilized
Speaker 1: in close proximity to other members of their own species.
Speaker 1: Because of this, it's been argued that plenty of non
Speaker 1: dromosaur predators like Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus might have hunted in
Speaker 1: packs too, but then again, perhaps they didn't. In a
Speaker 1: two thousand seven paper, paleontologists Bryan Roach and Daniel Brinkman
Speaker 1: dissected the issue at length, and in their opinion, neither
Speaker 1: dana Niicus, nor Velociraptor, nor any other non avian predatory
Speaker 1: dinosaur would have formed packs via email. Brinkman's blamed mammal
Speaker 1: like cooperative pack hunting is an extremely rare and complex behavior,
Speaker 1: so let's talk terminology. Brinkman and Roaches paper defines true
Speaker 1: cooperative pack hunting as a group effort carried out by
Speaker 1: animals that habitually work together with others of their species
Speaker 1: to capture and subdue prey too large for an individual
Speaker 1: predator to kill alone. Furthermore, these team players also defend
Speaker 1: their territory collectively and may share youngster rearing duties. No
Speaker 1: living bird or reptile fits the criteria. It's true that
Speaker 1: nile crocodiles sometimes gang up on big mammals like wilder beasts,
Speaker 1: but they later disperse, and although Harris hawks have been
Speaker 1: known to form hunting parties of up to nine birds,
Speaker 1: they target small game while doing so. That said, there
Speaker 1: is one living animal that, according to Roached Brinkman, might
Speaker 1: offer us some insight into how Drameosaurus and other non
Speaker 1: avian therapods behaved around big prey items, the Komodo dragon.
Speaker 1: Komodo dragons are solo hunters and effective ones at that,
Speaker 1: and adult can bring down victims ten times its own
Speaker 1: body weight. These reptiles are also eager scavengers, and when
Speaker 1: one of them kills a large prey item, others are
Speaker 1: likely to come running. What follows is a gruesome feeding
Speaker 1: frenzy with a dozen or more commodo dragons mobbing the carcass.
Speaker 1: Such meetings get violent fast. While squabbling over a corpse,
Speaker 1: kmmotos may attack one another. Sometimes they even kill and
Speaker 1: eat their smaller competitors at the site. So when paleontologists
Speaker 1: find a large collection of therapod bones and or teeth
Speaker 1: in the same fossil deposit, what should they make of it?
Speaker 1: Should they interpret the remains like a wolf style family unit,
Speaker 1: or should they be viewed as the site of a
Speaker 1: disorganized mob where side squabbles and cannibalism would have been rampant.
Speaker 1: For their part, Brinkman and Roach find the latter scenario
Speaker 1: more probable. Brinkman said Dana Nikus and other non avian
Speaker 1: therapods were most likely solitary hunters who engaged in antagonistic,
Speaker 1: commodo dragon like feeding aggregations, and they interacted with each
Speaker 1: other in ways that were much more contentious, combative, and cannibalistic.
Speaker 1: The has been widely believed. Okay, but what about dinosaur footprints?
Speaker 1: Can they shed any light onto the pack hunting debate.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a hundred and twenty million
Speaker 1: year old dromosaur trackway was discovered in China, six different
Speaker 1: sets of parallel tracks were found, each made by an
Speaker 1: animal standing about four ft or one point two meters
Speaker 1: tall at the hip, and judging by the nature of
Speaker 1: the sediment, it looks like these prints were all laid
Speaker 1: down within a very short span of time. Anthony J. Martin,
Speaker 1: a leading paleo ichnologist a trace fossil scientist, thinks the
Speaker 1: animals who made them were traveling in some kind of group.
Speaker 1: He said via email. The trackways show these dromayosaurs were
Speaker 1: moving at about the same pace, in the same direction parallel,
Speaker 1: and spaced more or less the same distance apart, so
Speaker 1: I'm fairly certain that this is evidence of group behavior. Still,
Speaker 1: this doesn't necessarily mean the dromosaurs hunted in packs. Maybe
Speaker 1: they were rushing toward a dead body like those independently
Speaker 1: minded komodo dragons. In order to confidently cite any footprint
Speaker 1: assemblage as the product of pack hunting or a similar activity,
Speaker 1: would need, said Martin, more evidence, such as tracks of
Speaker 1: a prey animal that was clearly preceding them and not
Speaker 1: by much time. Best of all would be the drumsur
Speaker 1: tracks ending at a kill site and acknowledgist can dream right.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: dynamite topics and dynamite visit our home planet, how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com