Re: Dinosaur environments

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

Somebody (Krentz?) said -- "It certainly made the experience much more 
meaningful and somehow made those trees even BIGGER in stature.  It was OK if 
our dinosaurs looked small next to them!  On an artistic level it's the same 
thing Doug Henderson has done for years."

The last time I took a serious look was 10 years ago, but I saw nothing then in 
the geo-record to approach the extant CA Redwoods in size, or even the trees 
mentioned in historical accounts 1600 to present. The largest fossil diameters 
afaik are 3-4m, Miocene (IIRC), at Florrisant. There are some Devonian stumps 
nearing 2m in diameter. 

As I don't see a reason why large stumps would not be preserved at some point 
(there seem to be many whole stumps preserved by ashfalls), it may be that 
trees did not get as big in dino-time environments as they do now. 

Again, it may be preservational bias, but there seems to be an overarching 
trend in the record through geo-time toward increasing size in trees -- and it 
is possible that the largest trees ever are Holocene. The most remarkable thing 
about this apparent trend is that it is largely un-noticed or ignored by 
academia.

I mostly post this in hopes someone is aware of data I have not seen (in SA, 
perhaps?) or is willing to otherwise comment -- but "redwood-sized" trees may 
be a stretch dat-wise in dino-scapes.