Re: [dinosaur] Did Mapusaurus packs hunt adult Argentinosaurs?

Unlikely but not impossible. In modern ecosystems, it's very rare for
predators to routinely take on prey much larger than themselves. Foxes
mostly take smaller animals like rodents and birds; Lions, which hunt in
pack, mostly take animals like zebra that are about the same size as them.
After all, why WOULD a lion risk injury or death by participating in an
elephant hunt if there are antelope available? For the same reasons,
carcharadontids would certainly have preferred smaller prey when it was
available — which would have been almost always.

That said, there are rare occasions when packs of lions, starved of easier
food, will collaborate to take down an elephant, despite the very real
danger. It's possible that starved carcharadontids, if they couldn't find
other prey animals, might become desperate enough to risk taking on a fully
grown titanosaur. But I certainly can't see them specialising in such a
hazardous lifestyle.

-- Mike.


On Thu, 3 Oct 2019 at 16:13, Poekilopleuron <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Good day,
>
> I would like to know your opinion about this hypothesis. Since they were
> contemporanious, could packs of very large carcharodontosaurids (_M.
> roseae_) specialize in active hunt of large (even adult?) _A.
> huinculensis_? What would be their chance to kill such a large prey animal?
> Thank you in advance! Tom
>