Re: Oviraptor

["Jaime Headden" <ja_headden@qilong.8m.com>]

Dino Sniffer (dinosniffer@hotmail.com) wrote:

<Jaime Headden is wrong about the age(s) of the Mongolian strata from which the
various theropods were collected.  They are NOT Cenomanian or Senonian, but
probably Late Campanian or Early Maastrichtian.  This is based on recently
published paleomag. data (check GSA abstracts, too).  Time to start quantifying
people!>

  Not once did I state my ages were absolute. As may be garnered from posts and
published work, dating of the Mongolian terrestrial beds is sketchy, at best.
The Djadokhta lacks conformities, as well, and being a purely terrestrial bed
depends on its relative position to the Barun Goyot and Nemegt Formations for
its age, as well as biostratigraphical data; the latter information in the
Nemegt Formation suggests a basal Maastrichtian or upper Campanian age, and a
upper to middle Campanian age for the Barun Goyot; the presence of some similar
taxa between the Barun Goyot and Djadokhta formations, including *Velociraptor,*
suggests that it does not lie too uncomformably older than the middle Campanian,
suggesting round estimates of a lower Campanian, upper Cenomanian. These are
relatively published suggestions, and do not depend on unpublished, abstract
data. I have not read much of the abstracts out for the GSA, but there are
comments enough onlist about the viability of abstracts versus the actual data
they point to. If there is some actual information that contradicts this,
perhaps this might be presented, but my quantification was available at the time
I wrote the post: biostrat correlation.

  Cheers,

  Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take. We are too used to making leaps in
the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all learn
to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

  "Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)