Re: Big Dinosaur Prints Found

[Marilyn Wegweiser <mdwegweiser@bsuvc.bsu.edu>]

At 12:31 PM -0500 3/20/01, T. Mike Keesey wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Rob Gay wrote:
>
> >  And, look at a human population. There are a number of people in any
> >  town with limps, or other things that would cause an abnormal
> >  trackway.
>
> Ah, but we're humans. We can take care of our injured, diseased, and
> deformed. For the vast majority of animals, injury, disease, and/or
> deformity leads to death far more readily.
>
> Among humans, an individual who can't even move his own body can rise to
> fame and success. Among other animals, an individual who can't move is
> dead within a week.

Succinctly put.

Dead in a week, or less. An easy meal is not overlooked by the hungry 
hordes. There were plenty of things with teeth looking for dinner in 
the Mesozoic.

Hopefully, the executioner will leave evidence in the form of a 
track-way that suggests the methodology of successful predation and 
whom was for dinner. (in the form of a coprolite or spewite).

Trace fossils, in the most basic of definitions, are defined as the 
indirect evidence of life as left by trails, tracks and burrows. We 
can take that farther to include other non-skeletal evidence left by 
any organism that directly supports the conclusion that it (the 
organism) was actually in that particular place at the time the 
creation of the track, trail, trace, spewite, coprolite, bite mark, 
or whatever indicator of behavior that you may find occurred.

Trace fossils are the only fossil, with the exception of an immutably 
autochthonous benthonic organism, that you can look at and know with 
certainty that the organism that left it was actually present on the 
bedding plane or bounding surface that you are now observing.

You cannot purport to identify beyond the shadow of a doubt the trace 
maker, unless you have the tracemaker dead in its tracks. Literally 
dead in its tracks. Other than that, you truly have at best, a 
mountain of overwhelming circumstantial evidence that points 
collectively and with strong argument, at potentially the best 
possible suspect.

Cheers,
Marilyn W.

;^)
Marilyn W.
--
                        =00=  =00=  =00=  =00=
                        Marilyn D. Wegweiser, Ph.D.
                Adjunct Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology
                     Cincinnati Natural History Museum

Assistant Professor of Geology
Department of Geology                   mdwegweiser@bsu.edu
Ball State University                   Office: 765-285-8268;765-285-8270
Muncie, Indiana 47306                   FAX:    765-285-8265