Inertial Feeding

Think back to those old Ray Harryhausen stop motion animation of dinosaurs roaming the world. One classic scene that you might recall is when a ravenously hungry Tyrannosaurs rex chops down on a terrified victim and devours his lunch by tossing the victim five meters up into the air and swallowing whole luckless victim into his waiting jaws. Such feeding is called inertial feeding, and is common in modern birds. Eric Snively and Anthony Russell set out to test the idea that Tyrannosaurs rex feed this way by modeling the muscle morphology, muscle generating force, moment arms, and rotational inertias of the head and neck. In the December issue of Paleobiology they report their findings. Tyrannosaurs rex had the ability to inertial feed, and could toss pitiful victims up into the air and down its throat. Yikes!

Snively, E. and A. Russell, 2007, Craniocervical feeding dynamics of Tyrannosaurus rex, Paleobiology 33(4):610-638.