Цитата оттуда:
"По мнению других специалистов, лишь молодые хищники могли пользоваться маленькими конечностями как оружием. У взрослых тираннозавров зона поражения сильно уменьшалась, что делало лапы неэффективными для борьбы с сопротивляющейся добычей."
Единичное мнение не может изменить выводы большинства учёных. Очевидные вещи определяются по скелету. В частности, со мной согласен Томас Хольц и Джейкоб Винтер:
"“It seems illogical to me to use such small arms to slash with,” said Jakob Vinther, a paleobiologist from the University of Bristol in the U.K. who attended the presentation. Without further evidence, he favors the idea of the arms being used for a “minor subsidiary purpose,” such as to clasp a partner during sex, despite Stanley’s claim that the claws would have been dangerous to use while mating.
The three-foot-long arms would also give a full-grown T. rex an awkwardly short reach for slashing, said Thomas Holtz, a tyrannosaur expert at the University of Maryland in College Park. The chest is so broad on a mature T. rex, he noted, that the “effective strike zone” of the swiping arm couldn’t be far from the animal’s torso. “I would expect it could cause some decent damage if it struck, but in order to deploy [the arm], Tyrannosaurus would basically have to push its chest up against the side of the victim,” Holtz said. “In such a position the tyrannosaur wouldn't be able to use its far more powerful armament: its massively powerful jaws.” During its lengthy juvenile years, though, Holtz conceded that a T. rex’s arms would have been larger relative to its body. “It might be that the arms were actually more functional in young T. rex, and became reduced in function as it became older,” he says. “The strike zone would be proportionately larger in a young T. rex—and going after smaller prey would mean the force required to kill the victim would be less.”"
Голосование
