RE: new aspect of extinction

["Cunningham, Betty" <Cunningham@sega.com>]

>     Isn't that bass ackward?  His idea was that light SENSITIVE   
>organisms were badly affected.  You seem to be suggesting the exact   
>opposite, that animals with light sensitive pineal glands actually had   
an >edge.

 I may have mis-read his since it seemed to cover the area I had oh so   
long ago.  I don't think I mis-read it, however. I think we're talking   
the same thing.
 The animals that were dependant on temperature changes or weather   
changes to indicate passage of time would not behave appropriatly for   
different times of the year which become indistinguishable during a   
nuclear winter, whereas an animal that could behave appropriate to the   
time of year merely by exposure to the length of day vs. night could   
continue a fairly normal breeding or migratory pattern. A non-sensitive   
animals' pattern would be messed up for the length of the nuclear winter   
and a sensitive animal could continue to breed or migrate at a   
normal-for-that-animal time.
 The length of time this period covered could drasticly alter the numbers   
of sensitve and nonsensitve animals.  If an entire species never recieves   
the signal to begin breeding for, say, 10 years (or 2 years or 20 years),   
plus whatever other factors are also taking place during said winter-I   
bet you the numbers of that species rather severely decline.  AND all the   
other animals dependant on that animal to survive drasticly alter THEIR   
numbers.  Spread this sort of thing across 90% of all dinosaur species   
alive at the time and see how the environment responds to this sort of   
hit.
 If dinosaurs never recieve the signal to begin migrating to new   
pastures, the damage to the ecosystem they remained in would be   
non-sustaining inside of a few years, on top of what ever the winter   
itself would have taken out.
 No meteor needed to actually land near these animals to create a   
problem.  They would be affected by drastic weather pattern changes that   
were sudden and of long duration IF they were unable to identify time of   
year with a seasonly-sensitive photoreceptor. (go pineal gland!)
 Which might explain why more fragile animals such as frogs survived   
something dinosaurs could not.  It need not have been cold during this   
winter-just unchanged weather for long periods of time. And frogs could   
survive that.

 -Betty Cunningham