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Re: sauropod breeding



----- Original Message -----
From: "Tommy Tyrberg" <tommy.tyrberg@norrkoping.mail.telia.com>
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 7:29 PM

Sure, but that's also where the live mass curve gets interesting.  As
long as there are significant dips in the supply, the predator
population limit is constrained to be less than a population able to eat
all the available juveniles, provided the sauropod population is the
principal food supply.

A wild conjecture. Since sauropods were presumably very long-lived could
they have used the same breeding strategy as e. g. cicadas or bamboo, i e
synchronized breeding at long intervals thus "swamping" predators with a
vast number of young but leaving lean pickings inbetween breeding episodes?
To judge from the cicadas a prime number of years (11, 13, 17, 19) is best
since it cannot be tracked by any shorter periodicity.

Sounds good to me!