This animal probably reached the maximum of size and of development of teeth and claws of which its type of animal mechanism was capable. Its bulk precluded quickness and agility. It must have been designed to attack and prey upon the ponderous and slow moving Horned and Armored Dinosaurs with which its remains are found, and whose massive cuirass and weapons of defense are well matched with its teeth and claws. The momentum of its huge body involved a seemingly slow and lumbering action, an inertia of its movements, difficult to start and difficult to shift or to stop. Such movements are widely different from the agile swiftness which we naturally associate with a beast of prey. But an animal which exceeds an average elephant in bulk, no matter what its habits, is compelled by the laws of mechanics to the ponderous movements appropriate to its gigantic size. These movements, directed and controlled by a reptilian brain, must needs be largely automatic and instinctive. We cannot doubt indeed that the Carnivorous Dinosaurs developed, along with their elaborately perfected mechanism for attack, an equally elaborate series of instincts guiding their action to effective purpose; and a complex series of automatic responses to the stimulus afforded by the sight and action of their prey might very well mimic intelligent pursuit and attack, always with certain limits set by the inflexible character of such automatic adjustments. But no animal as large as _Tyrannosaurus_ could leap or spring upon another, and its slow stride quickening into a swift resistless rush, might well end in unavoidable impalement upon the great horns of _Triceratops_, futile weapons against a small and active enemy, but designed no doubt to meet just such attacks as these. A true picture of these combats of titans of the ancient world we cannot draw; perhaps we will never be able to reconstruct it. But the above considerations may serve to show how widely it would differ from the pictures based upon any modern analogies. One may well inquire why it is that no such gigantic carnivora have evolved among the mammalian land animals. The largest predaceous quadrupeds living today are the lion and tiger. The bears although some of them are much larger, are not generally carnivorous, except for the polar bear, which is partly aquatic, preying chiefly upon seals and fish. There are indeed carnivorous whales of gigantic size, but no very large land carnivore. There were, it is true, during the Tertiary and Pleistocene, lions and other carnivores considerably larger than the living species. But none of them attained the size of their largest herbivorous contemporaries, or even approached it. Among the dinosaurs on the other hand we find that--setting aside Brontosaurus and its allies as aquatic--the predaceous kinds equalled or exceeded the largest of the herbivorous sorts. The difference is striking, and it does not seem likely that it is merely accidental.