Re: Sauropod heat? A serious problem...

[Mark Sumner <range@inlink.com>]

Steven S. Lazarus wrote:

> As a general observation, I find it amusing that because you don't
> understand sauropod metabolism that *they* had a problem.

Where's the contradiction?  No, I don't pretend to understand 
sauropod metabolism, but obviously they still had a problem.  ALL
creatures have problems.  Finding out how they overcome those 
problems is what this game is all about.

> 1) Obviously the animal existed.

I suppose that's where the _Barosaurus_ vertebrae and ribs 
that sit on my coffee table originated.  

> 2) Obviously it was a highly succesful animal.

And big.  Don't forget big.

> 3) If it was an unbearable existence, it wouldn't have evolved.

Oh, go talk to that thing that lives on lobster's lips.  That
doesn't sound like much fun.

> It's unlikely that sauropods laid awake at night worrying about their heat
> problem.

I'm sure they didn't.  That's our job.

> It seems that sometimes some people are so lost in their intellectual games
> they play with themselves that they actually believe their own B.S. and
> that *poof* that dinosaur is just going to *up an not have existed at all
> because I can't figure out how it could exist as it did*. These are not the
> dinos limitations. They're our limitations. The bones aren't going to
> vanish into thin air or change to support our understanding just because
> they don't make sense to us. Yet another example of the collective huge ego
> of homo sapiens...

Yes, apparently some human egos are so large, they think they 
already have all the answers.

The rest of us still have to ask.

Mark
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