Quote from: DoomRulz on May 05, 2014, 01:44:47 PM
I won't be purchasing the article at this time, but does this mean Deinonychus could crush bones?
No, that wasn't part of its feeding strategy - we find fairly few toothmarks from dromies on the bones of their prey. You can tell from the teeth, as they aren't designed to bear downwards with great concentration of force like a tyrannosaurid tooth - they're fairly short, curved backwards, with serrations along both edges, and closely packed in the tooth bed. If they used their jaws for killing, it would have been to deliver high-tissue-damage bites, using the high bite force to penetrate the teeth deeply, then with the curved and serrated edges they'd have little resistance as they jerked their heads back and tore off a chunk of meat.
When it came to feeding, dromies were probably too slight to have a digestive tract capable of dealing with bone. They'd have stripped meat off the carcass, rather than just gulping down as much as they could fit in their mouths, rex-style.
Quote from: xeno-kaname on May 05, 2014, 01:57:54 PMSo if this is true, if a raptor bit your arm it could snap it in two pretty easily right? With that bite force and sharp teeth it sounds easy to me. My knowledge in this area isn't much though so I'm mostly speculating.
I keep imagining a dog biting a long carrot and splitting it into 3 pieces 
I'm probably not even close 
Well, I'm not sure what the effect is from an alligator biting an arm, but it should do more crushing damage than what a similar-sized raptor would (to give you some idea). An alligator's thick, straight teeth are shaped in such a way that the force of the bite is concentrated downwards, while a Deinonychus' teeth angle the force backwards in more of a stripping motion. I'd imagine they wouldn't break your arm but would sheer right through your skin and scratch the bone - those jaws were adapted for tackling the thick scaly skin of large dinosaurs, rather than soft bony mammals like ourselves.
