RE: dinosaurs did eat grass

[Denver Fowler <df9465@yahoo.co.uk>]

--- "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>
wrote:
> > Jeff et al.
> >
> > Perhaps it may not be a coincidence that the
> ornithischians with tooth
> > "batteries" such as ceratopcians and hadrosaurs
> came to dominate
> > herbivores during the Late Cretaceous. There is
> more than one way to
> > skin a cat or to pulverize abrasive vegetation.
> 
> And, as I alluded to previously, the recent
> discovery of dental batteries in rebbachisaurid
> sauropods during the Cretaceous adds to
> this possibility.
> 

The earliest rebbachisaurs are from the European
Wealden, as are spinosaurs: both taxa typically
thought of as Gondwanan. The Wealden fauna has strong
biogeographic links with earlier (Morrison) and
roughly contemporaneous (Yellow cat-cedar mt) faunas
of North America. These correlations are as strong as
any similarity to Gondwanan faunas.

If rebbachisaurs were early grazer specialists, then
we should expect to see grass in the North (EUROPE) at
the same time. This doesn;t fit the current
grass-origin models: from my understanding, we see the
grasses only in Gondwana.

zip!

Denver.

>               Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
>       Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
> Department of Geology         Director, Earth, Life & Time
> Program
> University of Maryland                College Park Scholars
>       Mailing Address:
>               Building 237, Room 1117
>               College Park, MD  20742
> 
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
> Phone:        301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
> Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661     Fax (CPS-ELT):
> 301-405-0796
> 
> 



        
        
                
___________________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com