ya yeedoo vseattleye

[Stang1996@aol.com]

DAVEH47@delphi.com
<<I was reading some things about Ornithopods that says that 
Hadrosaurids were incapable of running fast.  So, then, how did large 
ornithopods defend themselves from predators?  They didn't have 
armor or horns or whiplash tails, so how could they defend 
themselves?  Could they have had some form of defense that didn't 
show up in the fossil record?  Could have had something like poison 
glands or even foul-smell secreting glands like a skunk?>>

Though I seriously doubt that Hadrosaurians couldn't run, there is 
always that problem of they still had no "physical deterents from 
attack".  In _The Dinosaur Heresies_ Bakker was also perplexed at 
this.  I think that the solution of how Hadrosaurians were able to 
survive and thrive in the late Cretaceous without any large scale 
armiments is that they really didn't need to because there were 
simply so many of them.  A modern analog to this (albeit, not quite 
what you were expecting) is the seastar predation of mussels in 
Puget Sound.  There are probably about fifteen species of seastar in 
Puget Sound that feed upon California Blue Mussels.  California Blue 
Mussels are just about the most tremendously defenseless mulusk 
that you'll ever meet; i.e. there are an easy prey for the seastars.  If 
they are such an easy prey, why then do they thrive with such 
constant predation?  Because there are simply so darn many of them 
and they grow so darn fast.  I suspect that the same sort of thing 
was happening with Hadrosaurians and the many predators which 
they faced.  Just my two cents (I am utterly bewildered by the fact 
that they actually manufacture a coin in Britain for two pence).

DPterosaur@aol.com
<<Will the terms "amniotes", "synapsids" and "pterosaurs" ever have 
the psychic punch that the terms "dinosaur" and "reptile" do?  I doubt 
it, but we can keep on trying.>>

Reptile conjurs up a psychic punch to you?  I don't know... All I can 
think of is what Reptile means; one that slithers or crawls.

pwillis@ozemail.com.au
<< in fifty years time the earths population will be in excess of 10 
billion people and more likely around 15 billion. ~~~  Let us be 
realistic: we are facing environmental disaster and, given past 
experiences, our species is unlikely to survive>>

I have to disagree strongly with the 15billion figure.  I really believe 
that it is so tremendously impossible for this planet to contain more 
than 12billion or so people that 15billion will never be reached.  With 
booming populations and decreasing amounts of arable land I truely 
believe that there will be a disaster of human population of mammoth 
proportions; i.e. in five to ten years the Earths population of humans 
will drop from 11billion to 2billion.  Maybe then we as a species can 
start acting responsible after seeing what we did; or maybe we'll start 
cleaning up the mess we made.

swf@ElSegundoCA.ATTGIS.COM
<<Most scholars believe that in classical Greek the letters were all
pronounced.  Thus, the correct *Greek* pronunciation of "pterosaur"
would be 'p-ter-o-sour'.  However, this is almost impossible for an
English speaker to pronounce, so we drop the initial 'p' in this
case.

In teh other words you mention, the 'p' follows a vowel, so we *can*
pronounce it easily - so there is no good reason to drop it.>>

That is probably true about classical Greek, I have no problem with 
that, my point was that though the words are of Greek origin they are 
no longer Greek, they are Latin(ised).  Thus, there are no super-fun 
consinent lumps like in Greek (or Russian or Czeck...).  Also, 
Latinesque sylibles end in vowels, not consents, so consinent lumps 
should be together at the beginnings of sylible.  Since you cannot 
say "pt" in Latin, and it must be said as one sylible, you should 
always drop the "p" when saying a word with "pt".  It's not that hard 
to say p-ter-o-saur, you just have to practice.  Learning Russian (or 
TRYING to learn Russian in my case) is good practice for those 
pesky, not-ever-found-in-English, consinent lumps like "vb", "sv", 
"gd", etcetera...  For all of you who know Russian and can decifer 
what my title says, good job (it would be so much easier with 
Russian letters mind-you).  For those of you who don't know what it 
says, tough.

do sveedaneeya

Peter Buchholz
Stang1996@aol.com