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Re: Carnivore Energetics: Why Are Lions Not As Big As Elephants? .. and why aren't antelopes?



The protection mechanism in Crocodylidae et al has been pretty successful. They basically have it both ways by nesting with 20 - 80 eggs, guarding the nest, then later protecting the hatched young by placing them in her mouth allowing her to leave with them if necessary. They sort of run away with the nest! The strategy seems to have been fairly successful. It makes one wonder what percentage of thecodont decendants exhibited these characteristics. Animals like Deinosuchus are an example of how big croc got (36 feet). Adult Croc's may be at the top of the food chain, they started out a the bottom when they were young.

Several nice fossils (phalanges, various teeth, croc stuff, turtle stuff etc) were collected during the January fossil hunt yesterday afternoon during a break in the action of our Hell Creek 4X4 rally. A film of some Hell Creek jeep rock crawling highlights can be seen at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNkiLFQTkKM

Frank (Rooster) Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming
www.cattleranch.org

Resistance is futile (for values < 1 ohm)


On Jan 21, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Andreas Johansson wrote:

On 1/20/07, David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
> this is a protection advantage not needed by mammals (who can
> simply run away with baby inside).

"Simply"?

Well, it's easier than running away with a nest ...

--
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?