Tarbosaurus junior didn’t bite, according to articles in ScienceDaily 10 May 2011 and ScienceShots, 9 May 2011. An international team of scientists from Japan, Mongolia and USA have studied the skull of a juvenile Tarbosaurus and concluded that it was not able to crush bone or exert strong bite and twisting forces with its jaw. Tarbosaurus was a large dinosaur similar to T. rex. Takanobu Tsuihiji of the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, who led the study explained: “We knew that adult Tarbosaurus were a lot like T. rex. Adults show features throughout the skull associated with a powerful bite … large muscle attachments, bony buttresses, specialized teeth. The juvenile is so young that it doesn’t really have any of these features yet, and so it must have been feeding quite differently from its parents”.
Tarbosaur fossils are found in the same rocks as giant herbivorous dinosaurs, and it is assumed they preyed on them. However, the juveniles would not have been able to take a bite out of one of these, even if they didn’t have to kill it. Palaeontologist Lawrence Witmer, of Ohio University, explained: “We don’t know to what extent its parents were bringing it food, and so it was probably already a pretty capable hunter. Its skull wasn’t as strong as the adult’s, and would have had to have been a more careful hunter, using quickness and agility rather than raw power”. According to SienceDaily, “The different hunting strategies of juveniles and adults may have reduced competition among Tarbosaurs and strengthened their role as the dominant predators of their environment”.
Editorial Comment: It escapes most people’s notice but this dinosaur is dead, and has never been observed alive, so it is impossible to say it was a “careful hunter, using quickness and agility rather than raw power”. There is another more simple solution to the apparent problem of its lack of brute biting force – it ate plants, just as Genesis says all animals were originally created to do. The robust skulls of the adults would allow them to eat tougher plants than the juveniles. Later as the world degenerated and became filled with violence, as described in Genesis 6, the adults may have discovered a new use for their tough skulls and jaws – to bite and kill other dinosaurs, but that is degeneration, not evolution. The fact these dinosaurs were buried with giant herbivorous dinosaurs does not mean they ate them. It just means they all got buried together in the same catastrophic event. (Ref. diet, tyrannosaurs, reptiles)
Evidence News 1 June 2011