Re: Bakker lecture

[Achut.Reddy@Eng.Sun.COM (Achut Reddy)]

ornstn@inforamp.net (Ronald Orenstein) writes:

>>Because anything powerful enough to kill dinosaurs should have wiped out
>>the more delicate creatures too.

>Well, if Bakker said this he needs to take a few courses in basic ecology.
>It's fairly well-known that the big critters at the top of various food
>chains often go first in crises of this sort, as they need the most
>resources to survive per individual.  The small "delicate" (??) creatures
>with lower resource requirements can hang in a lot longer.  What disappears
>first when rainforest (say) is degraded?  Usually the top predators and big
>herbivores.

This is true purely in terms of amount of  resource  consumption.
But   what  Bakker  meant  by  "delicate"  is  "narrow  range  of
environmental conditions that it can survive".  E.g., the animals
he  listed  apparently  could  survive  only  a  narrow  range of
temperatures, etc., compared to dinos which were rather hardy  as
far as temperature ranges.

It doesn't matter where you are in the food chain, if you can't
stand the cold (or heat).

-----------
Achut Reddy                     So many fossils... so little time!
achut@sun.com