Yes, a dinosaur might pack down the earth somewhat. I'm not sure its ground-pressure is any greater than an elephant's, but its body structure isn't really very elephant-like. It has more shoulder strength (presumably to maneuver that 7-foot skull around) and presumably could more easily pull a plow -- or a gigantic bronze harrow.
The most popular theory nowadays about the foodstuff of triceratops is that they ate treetrunks, bark, cycads, things like that. This is far from certain -- in general we are puzzled by dinosaur dentition and it's not obvious at all what many of them were eating. If we had a peek at their digestive tract, it would sure help. It took an actual preserved dinosaur stomach to find out what the duck-bills ate (hint: it wasn't swamp plants).
Anyway, the ceratopsians have immensely powerful jaw muscles, and scissor-like "molars". They didn't crush their food -- they sliced it up. So I guess you could feed them on railroad ties.
Joerg:
>I think that dinosaurs were pretty much exterminated in Peloria
Show me the slightest trace of game fun in such an option, and I'll go for it. Dinosaurs aren't all _that_ easy to exterminate, y'know.
>And: If there still are tame triceratops around, don't you think the
>Lunar Empire would use them instead of siege engines, or as heavy
>cavalry?
Siege engines? What would the dinosaur do to a fortress? Charge it? You'd think even a dinosaur would be reluctant to bash its brains out against a stone wall. Certainly no one that used elephants in war seems to have employed them as heavy cavalry or siege engines.
And I have my doubts about employing gazzam in the general Lunar army anyway, because I find it unlikely that the beasts can be forced to travel vast distances to go to war. They just don't seem to be the traveling types to me. No doubt if a foe ever got to Dara Happa, the local militia would produce some trained gazzams to fight the invaders.
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