



The global warming debate is often frustrating because even making the simplest point is fraught with difficulty because people get so wound up. Once a person is wound up it is very difficult to have a rational discussion. So when I came across this article I knew it was a golden opportunity to display and example of scientists that can look at the same exact data and reach totally opposite conclusions. The topic makes it even better because it is about velociraptors which are just plain cool.

So what I will do is present the data and then summarize the competing theories about the data. In this way it will be clear how both sides came to their conclusions about the hunting behavior of velociraptors.

The Data:

In 1969 palaeontologist John Ostrom described the Deinonychus (velociraptor variant) as a human sized predator that was quick fast and otherwise a very nasty predator. He found that the remnants of at least three of these raptors around the body of a Tenantosaurus which is much, much bigger than a raptor.

Many times that tenantosaurus remains were found, raptor teeth were also found. This is evidence that the raptors fed on tenantosaurus. However a raptor was not large enough to hunt such a large creature on it’s own. A tenantosaurus falls into the size of creature that it doesn’t need spikes to defend itself.

Theory #1:

This leads to first theory which was proposed by Dr. Ostrom in his initial paper. This theory is that raptors hunted in packs and they used pack behavior to take down much larger prey. Much like wolves are effective at taking down prey they could not tackle alone.

This theory is popular, partly because it is cool and exciting. It has highly popularized by the movie Jurassic Park. This requires intelligence and the ability to coordinate actions between individuals, but it remains only a theory.

Theory #2:

In 2007 Brian Roach and Daniel Brinkman argued that the evidence does not support that they were pack hunters, but that they were scavengers that fought over carcasses that were killed by larger predators. So a T-Rex would kill a tenantosaurus, it would eat its fill and go away. Then the smaller scavengers would show up and fight over the remains.

This would also explain why the raptor remains were around the bodies of tenantosaurus. Komodo dragons behave in a similar manner when there is a successful hunt and it could be argued that raptors have more in common with komodo dragons than they do with wolves.

Conclusion

The article continues about the ongoing research and additional evidence that raptor tracks have been found that could imply that raptors were social at times. But fossilized tracks are sketchy evidence at best. Tracks moving in the same direction could mean a lot of things from nothing at all to hunting together.

It does not mean that either side is stupid are are deniers for not liking one idea or the other. It means they they are interpreting the data in a different manner. It doesn’t matter how many papers there are to support one side or the other. One idea may be more popular because there was a movie that made the idea very cool, but it doesn’t make the one theory correct.

I like the idea of velociraptors taking down much larger prey by working together because it is just cool to think that is the way it was, but that doesn’t mean it is correct.

In much the same way the global warming debate plays out. Different people reach different conclusions from the same available data. Neither side is stupid for reaching their own interpretation, but it is unscientific to disregard others just because you don’t like someone else’s conclusions.

This is what has happened in the global warming debate. People refer to peer-reviewed papers as if they are the end all and be all of any debate or aspect of the debate. I could refer to papers by Ostrom and his colleagues all day long as absolute “proof” that raptors hunted in packs. That would not make Roach and Brinkman wrong.

In this regard more than any other the climate scientists have it wrong. They allow no dissent and no disagreement. They require a united front against any dissent. Disagreeing with global warming is apt to get a person labelled as unscientific. The truth is that nothing could be more unscientific than such an attitude.