Re: Cenozoic dinosaurs???!!!

["Tim Williams" <T.Williams@cclru.randwick.unsw.edu.au>]

> I just had someone tell me about a program on The Learning Channel about
> 40 million year old dinosaurs found in Australia.  Did anyone see this?
> Is it for real?  Or it this another "Mysterious Origins of Man" thing?

I'm an Aussie myself and I haven't heard anything about Cenozoic 
dinosaurs.  But, interestingly, a few scientists have postulated that 
some Aussie dinos may have survived the big K/T crash.  This is 
because southern Australia was positioned inside the Antarctic Circle 
during the Cretaceous and the weather would have been very dark and 
probably quite cold during the months-long polar winters.  So they 
would have been used to dark, cold (?freezing) conditions.  A 
hypsilophodont specimen from southern Australia shows enlarged eye 
sockets and optic lobes - ?adaptations to dark vision.