Photograph of the skeletal install of Allosaurus specimen AMNH 5753, from William Diller Matthews 1915 Dinosaurs. Credit: Project Gutenberg e-book, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Simulation recommends that characteristics for exploiting carrion may have been important for survival.
Meat-eating dinosaurs might have progressed to capitalize on the abundance of giant carcasses, according to recent research study released in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. This research study, conducted by Cameron Pahl and Luis Ruedas of Portland State University, Oregon, along with their coworkers, proposes that the remains of enormous sauropod dinosaurs might have represented a significant source of sustenance for big predatory dinosaurs.
Agent-Based Model Analysis
Meat-eating dinosaurs lived in communities abundant with both living and dead victim. The authors hypothesize that giant carcasses, like those of sauropod dinosaurs, may have provided a major source of food for large carnivores.
To evaluate this hypothesis, the researchers created an agent-based design, a simplified virtual simulation of a dinosaur environment. This design was based upon the ancient animals of the Jurassic-aged Morrison Formation, that included big predators like Allosaurus along with big sauropods, their carcasses, and an infinite supply of huntable stegosaurs.
In the model, carnivores (intended to mimic allosaurs) were appointed traits that would enhance their searching or scavenging abilities while obtaining energy from meat sources (imitating living prey or sauropod carcasses).
The design measured the evolutionary physical fitness of these simulated predators and discovered that, when large sources of sauropod carrion were readily available, scavenging was more rewarding than hunting, suggesting that predators in such environments might have progressed specialized traits to help them discover and make use of big carcasses.
Developing Scavenging Behaviors
The authors tension that this design represents a simplified abstract of a complex system, which the outcomes may be changed with the inclusion of more variables, such as additional dinosaur types or functions of the life history of the simulated dinosaurs. They note that models like this might enhance our understanding of how the availability of carrion can influence the advancement of predators.
The authors add: “Our evolutionary design demonstrates that large theropods such as Allosaurus could have progressed to subsist on sauropod carrion as their primary resource. Even when huntable prey was readily available to them, selection pressure preferred the scavengers, while the predators experienced lower physical fitness. We think allosaurs probably waited up until a bunch of sauropods passed away in the dry season, feasted on their carcasses, kept the fat in their tails, then waited till the next season to repeat the procedure. This makes good sense rationally too, since a single sauropod carcass had enough calories to sustain 25 or two allosaurs for weeks and even months, and sauropods were frequently the most abundant dinosaurs in the environment.” Reference: “Big boned: How fat storage and other adjustments influenced large theropod foraging ecology” by Cameron C. Pahl and Luis A. Ruedas, 1 November 2023, PLOS ONE.DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0290459.
