----- 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.