Re: Resources, energetics and dinosaur maximal size

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

So Thunderbird does not automatically insert line breaks when quoting 
(the way Outlook Express does). I'll try doing it by hand... :-(

> If the food intake of the largest herbivorous mammals defines the maximal rate 
> at
> which plant resources can be consumed in terrestrial environments and 
if that limit
> applied to dinosaurs,

It doesn't. Sauropods didn't chew. Evidently McNab has never seen a 
sauropod mouth.

This, the third sentence in the abstract, is the point where the paper 
turns out to be a failure of peer-review. <sigh>

> The maximal size of predatory theropods was approximately 8 tons, which if
> it reflected the maximal capacity to consume vertebrates in terrestrial
> environments, corresponds in predatory mammals to a maximal mass less 
than a ton,
> which is what is observed.

Greater resource availability or at least concentration (huge potential 
prey, all of which were r-strategists!), lack of chewing (never mind the 
intramandibular joint), serrated teeth.

Serrated teeth make a lot of difference, it seems to me. A pack of 
wolves killing a bison, as seen on TV, takes several hours. It involves 
the wolves biting into the place with the thinnest skin and trying to 
tear it into stripes, on the living animal, with their canines which are 
circular in cross-section (and with all their body weight). These 
pathetic attempts go on till the bison is weakened enough to fall to the 
ground... A murder of coelophysids, chirping annoyingly like in WWD, 
would have turned the same bison into a noodle sieve within minutes by 
_just taking bites out of it_. I think splatter does matter.