Land that Time Forgot (long)

[sean.kerns@sdrc.com (Snake)]

Okay, here's something a little on the lighter side of this
extinction event/no extinction event argument (I'm not a 
paleontologist, so I can get away with it...8-D):
_If_ one works from the theory that ~65MYA a great big meteor hit
the earth, and that the ensuing environmental effects caused the
extincton of lots of species (though _ALL_ of the dinsoaurs
bugs me...), and _If_ you describe the fact that some aquatic life,
including some shark species, survided this catastrophe because of
being "shielded" by the sea, would it then be theoretically possible
for a "Land that time forgot" scenario to take place, where ancient
species were protected from the extinction event and weren't dying
out on their own already, and in their coccoon sailed through the
K/T boundary and continued on their merry way in an isolated
environment, something like a current theory as to why marsupials
thrived in Australia/New Zealand despite being beat out everywhere
else? 
And if it were possible, then wouldn't it be possible that they were
still alive today, or very recently? 
I mean, okay, they're "obviously extinct", but so was the 
Coelacanth (sp?), right? 
Or there is the idea that birds are dinosaurs, and it just so 
happens that only the bird species lived thru the extinction, while
all of the "classic" dinosaurs were wiped out? Isn't it also 
possible that lots of species of dinosaurs had feathers, instead
of the lizard-like skin we like to give them? In this version of
reality then, the biggest ones died out in the big K/T boom,
leaving the smaller ones. This seems more plausible to me; that
way, you have larger members of a family dying out, not just
a whole family mysteriously disappearing down to the last
member, small _or_ large, while other families of land animals
scooted right on by. That just seems a little too neat and tidy.

Anyway, these are just my amateur thoughts and opinions on the
subject, wholly unsupported, thrown out as "chub" for the 
paleontological sharks to gorge on.
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|    Sean R. "Snake" Kerns              e-mail: sean.kerns@sdrc.com |  
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