Re: Gobi finds

[Neil Taylor <NEIL@ARC.UG.EDS.COM>]

These Gobi finds are *exciting* - I'd love to hear more!

pjanke@maroon.tc.umn.edu wrote/quoted:

>finds included:
        [...]
>       --six skeletons of the recently discovered creature Mononykus,
>perhaps including the first skull or significant portion of a
>skull, Novacek said. The creature represents a transition between
>birds and dinosaurs, Novacek said.

Is this another find with feathers?  Or is the assertion based on anatomy?  How 
do they compare with Archeopteryx?

>``We're picking up ... an extraordinarily rich picture of a
>dinosaur community toward the end of the dinosaur empire, that
>captures both the decline of the dinosaurs and the ... rise of the
>diversity of mammals,''

Does anyone know more of this?  Are they saying (like Bakker) that the D's were 
in decline at this time and we are seeing a faunal pattern which presages an 
end, or is it just "shortly before XXX wiped them out"? (let XXX be your 
favourite catastrophe)

How close are the mammals to post Cretaceous finds?

[Aside - when/where are the earliest Marsupial finds?  When do we put hand on 
heart and assert "these are Eutherian mammals"?]