“Dino fight clubs” reported in Live Science and Science (AAAS) News 10 September 2021 and Paleobiology 6 September 2021, doi: 10.1017/pab.2021.29. Scientists at Royal Tyrell Museum and University of Alberta, Canada, have studied 528 skull bones of theropod dinosaurs and found 122 had bite scars from other dinosaurs. Overall, about 60% of the adult tyrannosaurids (T. rex, etc.) had bite marks. None of the younger dinosaurs had bite marks.
Researchers estimated the relative sizes of the biters and the bitten by comparing the spacing between the teeth of the skull and size of the bite marks on them and concluded the aggressors and victims were of similar size.
Caleb Brown, a curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, explained to Live Science: “Taken together, we can piece together how these animals were fighting. They were likely posturing and sizing each other up, then trying to grab each other’s heads between their jaws”. The researchers suggested the dinosaurs started biting one another when they reached sexual maturity, and this behaviour was part of competition for mates, territory or status.
The smaller theropod dinosaurs did not have these bite marks. According to Science News, “None of these had bite marks, suggesting that—like the birds that descended from them—these animals may have stopped fighting violently over females, and instead started to woo them with shiny feathers”. The original report in in Paleobiology is entitled: “Intraspecific facial bite marks in tyrannosaurids provide insight into sexual maturity and evolution of bird-like intersexual display”.
Links: Live Science, Science
Editorial Comment: The belief that dinosaurs stopped fighting and started evolving feathers to find mates is pure fantasy, and has to be among the silliest explanations we have ever heard for how and why dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Nevertheless, the bite marks on the dinosaur skulls are real, and may have been the result of dinosaurs fighting one another, which is simply a reminder of how violent the world was when these dinosaurs were buried and fossilised. When God created the world everything was very good, which means animals did not fight or harm one another. However, after the world was corrupted by human sin everything degenerated, and by Noah’s day, the world was filled with violence by people and animals. This corruption grieved God so much that he sent the worldwide flood to destroy that world (Genesis 6:11-13) and the resulting flood-formed sediment buried many dinosaurs bearing the signs of the violence God hates.
That flood judgement was only a temporary solution to the problem. The real solution is that God sent Jesus to pay the penalty for the sin that brought corruption into the world. All those who put their faith in him can look forward to a new world where there is no violence, and nothing will harm or destroy (Isaiah 65:25).
Creation Research News 29 September 2021
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