SIGH.. EGG ON YOUR FACE

["Darren Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

Deep, rumbling voice: "Who disturbs my slumber?"

> Darren Naish said: "...eggs are too rare a resource for any
> endotherm to utilise them as a full-time resource...there are not
> seek-and-destroy mammalian egg-predators, nor have there ever
> been...(and so eggs are unlikely to have been significantly
> implicated in dinosaur extinction)."

In an attempt to divert the direction of the rest of this thread, I
should say that the above comments stand for theropods too, and if you
are saying that a morphology is as bizarre as it is
(e.g. _Oviraptor_), yet only used in opportunistic encounters, what is
that morphology used for for the rest of the time?
      
> Apart from the obvious blunder here (hedgehogs, badgers, and
> squirrels, for example, do seek eggs and when they find them they
> destroy them), this statement, as a response to my views, does
> not accurately reflect them!  

Oh, silly me, what a blunder! Bar egg-eating snakes, all animals that
eat eggs do so opportunistically. I'm not going to get involved in
this debate, as I think it's an immediate non-starter. John might
think me pig-headed but, well, that's science for you.

> Nor does: "John doesn't seem to be
> aware...that terrestrial crocodiles were eaters of dinosaur
> eggs..." since I have specifically invoked them, at least twice. 

My apologies if this is correct. Are you really saying that egg
predation was a major component in the extinction of dinosaurs?
Perhaps this explains the extinction of big ground birds in the late
Tertiary too? (I'm kidding John).

DARREN NAISH