davehone

Get some eau de rex.

Slightly more seriously and not entirely off topic, I understand this is a real issue for female owners of male iguanas.

Ok I'll go for craniofacial biting. Some of the big theropods (including Tyrannosaurus, but also some others, notably a thing called Sinraptor) tend to have lots of minor marks and healed posits around the front of their snouts. These typically match the marks to get from the teeth of other large carnivores, including those of the smae species (and in the case of rexy, nothing else was around that size). Since you don't tend to try and hunt and kill those of the same species,a and if you do, you don't tackle things the same size, or head on, (and this keeps happening, loads of them have it, it wasn't rare) the obvious inference is that this was fighting, possibly even ritualised combat. Much like many living species, they would likely square up in some way, and if no one backed down, they'd fight. Head-to-head with animals this size and shape, the obvious thing is to try and bite the other guy's head and so you get lots of little punctures and dents all around the face, and since they didn't usually kill each other, these would have a chance to heal, leaving all the bumps and pathological bits we can see preserved in the bones.

Err see above / below. Not sure where it's gone now, but this came up earlier. Short version, accrue data from lots of streams - tracks, anatomy, brain structure, mechanical testing, logic, comparisons to living animals etc.

Yep! I once put out a press release for a paper and one places used the entire thing verbatim except to delete the word palaeontologist and in one case replace it with 'archaeologist' and another with 'anthropologist'. Apparently I didn't know my own job as well as they did.

I also feel sorry for other palaeo people as 'palaeontologist' is synonymous for many with 'dinosaurs'.

There are three main things you want to look for / at when doing this, and they can provide different degrees of information and confidence. First off there are ecological analogues - if the animal in question was clearly a large and terrestrail herbivore, then looking at other big ones might be of use (e.g. elephants, rhino, buffalo). Then you can look at functional analogues - those which have a number of key features in common that link to certain behaviours (so big claws, a strong elbow, enlarged shoulders, and interlocking vertebrae are all key to ant-eating animals). Finally you can look at living relatives of the group (if any are still around, or if not, their nearest relatives) to see what they do. In the case of dinosaurs and pterosaurs, that means birds and crocs for living relatives.