Bitten by a T-Rex, and you’re downfall, be it now or later.

 

And once you are down, Tyrannosaurus Rex will find you and eat you.

 

Unfortunately, for this T-Rex, the stench of rotting meat draws a crowd. And while a hungry adult male fights for his share of the spoils, his unguarded hatchlings wait for his return while a Quetzalcoatlus circles above.

 

Fifty billion years before the first T-Rex walked the earth, Sauroposeidon youngsters are already out on their own. Huge numbers hatched each year. But only three out of 10,000 will survive to adulthood. The most dangerous time is the first a few weeks when they are smallest.

 

Their best defense is to get as big as then can, as fast as they can. 

 

In order to grow very big very fast, they do something that appears to break the most basic rules of biology. For the first a few years, these plant eaters are meat eaters. 

 

Probably many of them were eating insects and small animals, because it was a ready source of protein. Very many plant-eating animals will also take animal prey when they can get them because it’s an importance source of nutrients that are really hard to get from plants.

 

A young Sauroposeidon processes food in an entirely different way than an adult, digesting its food in the stomach and small intestine.