Paleo ecology (was: Biting Ceratop{s}ians)

[Mike Bonham <bonham@jade.ab.ca>]

Phillip Bigelow wrote:
>   Most of what we know about the forests that existed in the Hell Creek
> Formation come from jumbles of leaves that were washed into a river
> channel or onto a river floodplain. This also says nothing about
> the origin of the leaves. The leaves could have been carried 50 miles 
> downstream
> from where they fell off the trees.  Un-natural associations of flora would be
> preserved in these river deposits.  Dr. Kirk Johnson has done most of the
> recent work on the Maastrichtian flora of the northern great plains,
> including Triceratops' home, the Hell Creek Formation. 
>  IMHO, we will probably never have a GOOD idea of what a plains-dinosaur 
> ecology
> looked like, just as we will probably never have a good idea of what a 
> mountain-dinosaur ecology looked like (if one ever existed).  These habitats
> don't get preserved in the fossil record (although a mish-mash of their
> flora and fauna get washed down into the lowlands and into the sea). 

Is it really as bleak a prospect as that?  I expect it should be possible
to eventually deduce many of the major floral and faunal associations of
the ancient eco-systems, with much hard work and serendipity!

Coprolites show which plants the dinosaurs (and other herbivores?) were
eating.  We would then know that at least those plants lived in the same
eco-system as each other and the relevant animals (if we could identify the
original owners of the dino-scat).

Tooth marks on prey species could be correlated with carnivores and scavengers,
to establish some parts of the food chain.  Chance finds of carnivores with
undigested prey in their stomach cavity would give direct evidence.

Pollen blows everywhere; you'd have a pool of candidate plant species from
a variety of surrounding ecologies, possibly you could correlate relative
pollen abundances with your mish-mash leaf collection and the coprolites.

We may get to the point where, from the list of organisms and their deduced
characteristics, along with estimates of relevant external factors, computer
simulations could generate plausible ecological communities, and weed out
combinations that couldn't have worked.

Accidental geological disturbances (landslides, volcanic explosions and
ashfalls etc.) must occasionally bury entire communities.  We might get
(really) lucky and discover one of them.

So, even if ordinary pampas environments do not accumulate continuous
depositional sediments, it seems to me we might still be able to obtain
a reasonable picture of them by applying brains and luck to the problem.

Or, is this too rosy an outlook?

  Mike Bonham     bonham@jade.ab.ca    Jade Simulations International
``Organization is the enemy of improvisation.''        -- Beaverbrook