Re: Mammal competency.

[Robert.J.Meyerson@uwrf.edu (Rob Meyerson)]

I thought I would let this one go by, but after reading it, I changed
my mind.

>>         I would certainly never argue that extra-biotic influence is
>> required for extinction, and I am willing to submit that many
>> species do become extinct, effectively by being "out-competed".
>
> And yet a general bias exists among people who care what happened at
> the K/T against biological causation.

That's because, to date, there are no workable senarios for a
 biological means for extinction that accounts for *all* animals that
 kicked the bucket.  Until a workable theory comes out, this "bias"
 will hold strong (because all evidence points to a
 non-biological/universal mechanism).

>>  I believe it is more likely that a montage of events aside from
>> direct pressure of another organism are also culprits in most
>> extinctions, such as, competition+disease, or competition+climatic
>> change+random genetic quirk that allows one species to gain a
>> decisive advantage while the other is weak, etc.  The point being
>> that "out-competition" has to accomplished *BEFORE THE TARGET
>> SPECIES CAN ADAPT*.
>
> A rapid, hopeful monster is possible.  A gradual accumulation of
> diverse predators of eggs is more likely.

[Buzzing sound]

Go and read up on your ecology.  There are a mountian of studies out
 there which discuss the interactions between species.  EVERY TIME, it
 has been shown that if a new factor doesn't cause extinction in a
 relatively short time frame, then the native species will adapt to the
 new threat, rendering the "threat" ineffective.

>> The point of my posting (or one of them, at least), was that what
>> applies to a species does not always apply to a group.
>
> You're denying me my only trump: the very thing that applies to
> dinosaurs AS A GROUP is the egg.

But it doesn't apply to, or account for, *all* Late-K casualties.
 Your destroyer-mammal hypothesis doesn't account for the great sea
 reptiles (which probably gave live birth in the open sea), or any of
 the invertebrate fauna that also went extinct.  This fact is routinely
 ignored, and *must* be accounted for, if your ideas are to have any
 weight whatsoever.

>> While you have followed a logical approach in setting up your murder
>> mystery, with a putative weakness in the victim, and a strength in
>> the alleged killer.  As I mentioned in my previous posting, you have
>> not explained why evolution, the "police" as it were, did not step
>> in sooner to stop the crime.
>
>I did, in an earlier post, hypothesize that dinos were naive to
>mammal predation until the "moment" that mammal defences, built in
>response to dino predation, became offensive weapons.  In this
>sense, they resemble the invasions of islands where they destroy
>species which have had no time to respond (adaptively).

Again, this smacks of a conspiricy by the mammals, all biding their
 time for the right moment to strike.  Nature doesn't work that way.
 Even under punk eq, evolution can and does take several generations to
 complete the change, plenty of time for the resident populations to
 adapt.

The final comment of the effect of rats wreaking havoc on the native
 island populations is flawed in that the rats are *invading*.  Your
 destroyer-mammal idea admits that the mammals in question involved in
 situ.  Unless you also suggest a "chinese fire drill" of all mammal
 populations (O.K. everyone, change habitats:-) then the original idea
 is still weak.

Rob

***
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries!"
                -MPATHG