BGR
Tyrannosaurs hunted in packs, making them even more terrifying
It’s hard to imagine an ancient creature that would make you more than a tyrannosaurus scary. The mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is the most important icon of all the dinosaurs, but it is just one member of a larger family of carnivorous dinosaurs called tyrannosaurs. Many of them were massive and although the debate continues over whether they were active hunters or mainly scavengers, they are almost always presented as lonely in both fictional and historical respects. New research published in PeerJ suggests that this may not have been the case, and that tyrannosaurs could often be hunted in groups as a pack. This finding is based on the discovery of a handful of tyrannosaurus skeletons found at the same location in a lake where the animals allegedly drowned. Their remains were fossilized as a group, and researchers suggest that the animals were actually engaged in social hunting when floods swept them away and led to their deaths. If that is indeed the case, it could rewrite what we know about how these old carnivores lived their lives. The find itself is remarkable. Tyrannosaurus fossils are not exactly the kind of thing you find in your backyard, and finding four or five of them in the same place is incredibly lucky. The fact that these five dinosaurs all roamed the same place at the same time may indicate that the animals were more social than previously thought, and if they had hunted together, it would have been a terrible force of nature. It was once believed that tyrannosaurs and dinosaurs in general were not as social as many modern animals. In the case of carnivores such as tyrannosaurs, their brains were so small that scientists originally thought they did not have advanced social behaviors such as pack hunting. This discovery may be proof that the carnivores did collide to hunt their prey, but it will be incredibly difficult to prove that this was the case. There are other reasons why the dinosaurs were grouped in one place, including the possibility that they were victims of poisoning after drinking from an infected water source, or even that they were killed by a wildfire. The researchers note that charcoal is also located near the fossil, and that a fire could have actually forced the animals to pull together, trap them and eventually suffocate or burn them to death. Despite these possibilities, the researchers seem fairly confident that their theory about a deadly flood event holds the most water. Of course, it is very difficult to study animals that are no longer in the environment, especially if we have no comparable living family members. Tyrannosaurs were perhaps hunters, and if they were, it would have been incredible to see them in action. Unfortunately, we will never know for sure if we do not have a Jurassic Park-like resurrection.