Would Scavengers Be Better Fighters Than Hunters

i think the smaller ones not so much; perhaps if they roamed in packs.

But the larger(3+tons) i would think they would be more adept to fighting other predators. The Abelisaurs, with their high bite forces and short but robust body would almost certainly be a matchup for any carnivore it is attempting to steal a kill from. Not saying Abelisaurs were strictly scavengers - in fact the larger ones like Ekrixinatosaurus - were quite capable of killing on their own.

Rugops, on the other hand...i believe that specific genus was primarily a scavenger. It's dwarfed by the apex predators of its time and region. Its jaws apparently very weak, the teeth small in comparison to other abelisaurs. Also, If it were to make a kill, there's no way it would put up a decent fight one v one. My theory is the smaller abelisaurs were pack animals, using their numbers to scare off other predators from their kills. Although this would aid in making kills of their own...much like the hyena or african wild dog..

Can this be said about all small theropods? probably not. And i don't believe they were any more adept at fighting other predators one v one either.

Eh, never said it was a perfect theory, haha.

neat idea though!

Well it is a good concept, I must say.

REX FAN 684 - What a very neat concept! Hmm. I'd say that some of the larger animals that had fallen to scavenging would likely be quite capable fighters - especially since their livelihood would depend on their ability to secure carrion from other predators. Traditionally, in the animal kingdom, if you're larger and have a more frightening appearance than someone else, you traditionally can scare them away from their kills with a minimum of danger. No one wants to find out just what those big claws and teeth can do! :)

rex fan.... i have to applaud to you on this one this is probably one of the neatest and well thought out concepts i ever heard, i have actually thought about this once and i think it was probably very true. 

Entirely possible. I mean, if Rex was a scavenger (just as an example, there's stood much evidence to disprove it), then it would have obviously been a superior fighter over Nanotyrannus and Dromeaosaurus. This was a bit of a joke, sarcasm is hard to understand over the internet.

It's possible if larger dinosaurs, such as Rex or Giga, needed to resort to scavenging, but I doubt it for the smaller ones. The smaller scavenger would most likely wait for the large carnivore to finish, or dash in, rip a piece off, run off, repeat.

This is just me of course.

Giga is actually a good example for this. It lived in an area covered in giant predators. If it scavenged, it'd have to be intimidating and possibly a superior fighter over, say, Ekrixinatosaurus or Tyrannotitan.

Glad you guys found it so interesting. Just shows how not one concept is the answer. This one's probably true to a degree, and it is even more so when combined with other theories about hunting and scavenging.

@Carnosaur, abelisauridae as a whole did not possess either the longest dentition proportionally or the longest snouts. So the idea that rugops was so unique is invalid.

Note that carnosaurs and tyrannosaurs both were likely not scavengers for the most part.

If I may say so myself though, scavenger behavior seems to be mainly restricted to smaller carnivores overall. Although tyrannosaurids do generally possess a far better suited anatomy for scavenging than the former (they have a much higher capcity to crush bone as opposed to slice flesh and cause massive amounts of broad blood-loss), the large genera did not evolve and become dominant until the later Cretaceous after allosaurs became very much extinct (or at least very redundant).

It is possible that scavengers would need to fight other carnivores more often, but I would not consider them "better fighters", simply because animals of different specializations require very different qualities. I would definitely consider that tyrannosaurids were simply far better suited for fighting (face-to-face at least, where carnosaurs would be pretty much fucked with their much more gracile skull morphology), but whether or not scavengers were better fighters in general is unknown to me. Note, I am not at all implying that tyrannosaurids were primarily scavengers