Re: K-T Theories

[larrys@zk3.dec.com]

murphy!acmcr!vr@uunet.uu.net (Vicki Rosenzweig):

>That parses, but I'm not sure how good a model rabbits are
>for dinosaurs--rabbits are (notoriously) rapid breeders, and
>a single pair can produce a _lot_ of rabbits in the course of
>a year (see the Fibonacci sequence for approximate numbers,
>though that assumes immortal rabbits with no predators); we
>don't, as far as I know, have good numbers on how rapidly
>any dinosaur bred, but they were large and didn't reach reproductive
>age as quickly as rabbits.

Mickey tells me in email that there was just one disease
released into the population, which pretty well blows
_that_ idea.  It still intrigues me, though.  Perhaps
in my copious free time I'll take up his offer of a
reference for disease propogation and take a stab at an
alife simulation, just for kicks.  Bakker (not Horner,
that was a network glitch :) isn't completely out in left
field on everything, but sometimes I listen to all the
extinction theories and see the old blind-men-and-the-
elephant story.

While it is true the rabbits breed a _whole_ lot faster
than dinosaurs, it is also true we could account for that
with a faster rate of disease introduction - of course,
the idea of a gov't introducing new diseases is a creepy
one, so perhaps we'd best let it lie.

regards,
Larry Smith