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Dinosaur cavalry

Legendary B said:
1) T-rexes can only sprint in short bursts. So the average athlete can in fact out run them.

2) Assuming you're in a random encounter like you would have in Ark, the person would be standing around 80-100ft away from a T-Rex. That's enough distance to get away from them if you're just as fast as them. Even better if you're running down hill, because T-Rexes were extremely top heavy that they could fall.

3) If a person knew they would be walking into T-Rex territory, they would not be wearing shoes and pants they could not run in.
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Could you point me to a source that shows what a short burst is to a T-Rex and how that is determined?
 
Legendary B said:
The bolded is your biggest problem. Ark super-sizes the Dinosaurs beyond their RL selves and nerfs the human protagonists' running speed.

Any athletic human being irl like myself could out run T-Rexes and Gigas, especially if the terrain doesn't favor them. Current consensus puts them running around 15-20mph.

Given that fact, large therapods would only be used as status symbols and nothing more.
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The speed thing isn't entirely a consensus thing, just like when there was the big thing about T-Rex being an exclusive scavenger or some of the claims about some specific coloration. It's a new theory that's still being bounced around as more paleontologists and biologists go over the information.
 
Yah, From what I've seen there doesn't seem to be a fixed idea about how fast a T-Rex could move though even its slowest estimated speeds I've seen wouldn't give it a great chance it to lets say catch people running away in a straight line it would still be fast enough to catch the sort of prey they were believed to hunt.
 
George said:
Could you point me to a source that shows what a short burst is to a T-Rex and how that is determined?
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The most recent evidence as of 2017 I can find is that T-Rex could not run.

Here are some important quotes:
The research looked "extensively into the gait and biomechanics" of the world's most notorious dinosaur and determined that, thanks to his enormous size and weight, Tyrannosaurus rexcould never have chased after his dinner at high speeds -- and likely struggled to even walk quickly.
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Other sources say that T-Rex was even slower than I generously told you guys.

According to a new report published in the journal PeerJ, the fastest a Tyrannosaurus rex could have walked was 12 miles per hour. That differs with past theories that the T. rex could run.
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Vindictus said:
They only need to run fast long enough to catch you, though.
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That's a fairytale if my links hold any weight.
 
Athene said:
It's walking 5 minute miles. Its going to catch you.
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That is not what the article is suggesting. It's saying a T-Rex can only walk based on what we call "running" versus "walking" and the fastest it can move was 12mph.

12mph top speed is a joke. Even you Athene stand a chance of outrunning that, assuming your as fast as the average woman, not to mention anyone else on this forum.

Like I said, T-Rex would be useless when it comes to calvary. Despite being faster than the largest sauropods, it comes in with a huge weight disadvantage and would require constant supply of meat just to prolong its use in a campaign.
 
Every few years, another study comes out saying T-rex was fast, T-rex was slow, back and forth.

Maybe this time it'll stick, but stating the limit was bone strength, due to impact shock, in an extremely awkward and unnatural-looking computer model with no moving vertebra or hip pivot, makes me really question the model.

Like, I'm not exactly peer review, but that model's missing an awful lot of shock-absorption qualities in a body.
 
A lot of it depends on which dinosaurs and what their behaviour is like. You've gotta remember that there's animals bigger and killy-er than horses but we didn't domesticate them and use them as cavalry for largely the same reasons.

Carnivores would probably not be favoured for largely the same reason we didn't domesticate and ride bears. I mean they're unapproachable for one. If the Kushites didn't spend a lot of time trying to ride Lions they're probably not going to be especially enthusiastic about the idea of jumping into a pen with a Utahraptor. Secondly, even if a bronze age society somehow managed to domesticate them they'd be terrible for all but the most well-supplied campaigns. Seriously, meat wasn't generally the highest thing in supply and something like an Allosaur or whatever is going to need a lot of it. Unlike a horse however, when it runs out of food, it's not going to keel over and die. It's going to start snacking on your soldiers and retainers. Oops.

EDIT: Also there's a problem with discipline. Say you've domesticated them and the animals are reasonably well fed and you make it to the battlefield. You charge, a good bunch of the guys in front get mauled. Victory right? Except not necessarily. Your Utahraptors start chowing down on their kills, the enemy ranks start getting their shit together. Your commander sounds a withdrawal (assuming your unit tactics are developed enough for that sort of thing at this point), but the riders are having trouble getting their mounts to disengage and pretty quickly the enemy infantry are lunging at you with axes and spears.

So herbivores are your go-to. Here your big factors are size, speed/endurance and temperament. Ideally you'd want something small-ish, like wild horses were before we bred them to be larger so that primitive bronze age societies are actually capable of subduing them. All you need initially is something to pull a cart around, before you can breed it to be large enough to carry a man in armour. Speed is an obvious one. You want something that can move fast and keep going for long distances. Something like an Ankylosaurus or a Triceratops is probably not useful for much besides basic pack animal duties. Then there's temperament a.k.a the main reason elephant cavalry isn't popular. If it spooks too easy you risk them running wild among your own men. You can probably train/breed this out of an animal eventually but this goes back to the whole size issue.
Legendary B said:
I agree with the side of Ceratopsids and Sauropods. They would be the most practical force until catapults could start slinging +500kg stones at them. Until then, they would easily outlive the use of Elephant Calvary units from history, because their bones, skin, and armor would be too dense to cause significant trauma to kill them.
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You might have more trouble killing them but causing them to freak out and trample their own men is a possibility.
 
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Ralson said:
Every few years, another study comes out saying T-rex was fast, T-rex was slow, back and forth.

Maybe this time it'll stick, but stating the limit was bone strength, due to impact shock, in an extremely awkward and unnatural-looking computer model with no moving vertebra or hip pivot, makes me really question the model.

Like, I'm not exactly peer review, but that model's missing an awful lot of shock-absorption qualities in a body.
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Even with just the bone strength there are massive limitations when working from fossils.

On top of that there are speed estimations well above what their tests would limit them to based on trackways for similar species.
 
What about sourapods? Personally i think just having a big saura walk into the e emy should do plenty of damage just cause of the size.
 
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