domestication

There are some popular "documentaries" which mix interviews with paleontologists with "live action" dinosaurs interacting with people and things like automatic doors in the modern world. In one I was shown today, my "people wouldn't act like that" alarm rang. e.g. They'd devise improvised weapons to protect the kids while staging their retreat.

Which, of course, had me wondering: if you took a dozen young adults with pocketknives and tossed them back into the Cretaceous, how many generations would it take before they decided they'd reduced the risks enough (and could build sturdy enough pens) that they could start trying to domesticate some of the dinos? So far, at least, reptiles in general have been at best tamed a little, but only as pets and not for food or for assistance. But dinos weren't exactly reptiles--maybe it would work.

It might help if you started with a pack-animal type (wolf to dog)--footprints tell us some of the dinos moved or hunted in packs. Most modern reptiles don't seem to--though some move in family groups and some crocs seem to coordinate hunting.

Trying to picture the result gets biased by what happens when we domesticate mammals (rounder muzzle, floppy ears). There were already relatively small dinos about. Breed herbivores to not freak out around omnivores and be small enough for a human to conveniently slaughter. Breed some velociraptor to accept humans as alphas and help herd herbivores.

DALL-E-2 gave me this in response to "Herd of domesticated albertadromeus with big eyes and rounded muzzle kept in line with two domesticated velociraptors with giant cycads in the background." A bit more colorful than clear... I think there's some Dall-E fu I haven't mastered.