Re: New California Theropod

[jrhutch@socrates.berkeley.edu (John R. Hutchinson)]

>Today's San Fransisco Chronicle had more detial on the new theropod.
>Thanks to recent movie publicity (or a slow day for news), They put it

FYI: Greg Erickson was misquoted/misrepresented in this article. He did not
help the artist reconstruct the whole theropod from a tiny limb bone
fragment; the artist simply offered his own speculation based on it. The
bone was not diagnostic to any clade less inclusive than Theropoda.

More importantly, Greg did not say that the predator:prey ratio was 1:10,
or that dinosaurs were rare in Cali. He said that dinosaur *fossils* were
rare in Cali, and that there were maybe 10 known specimens of plant eaters
(one or two taxa), so one would expect some meat-eaters too.

Also, he did not say that there was probably a _Tyrannosaurus_ that will be
found; he said that it would not be surprising if a *tyrannosaur* was
found. Nit-picky, but a misquote nonetheless. Finally, he did not say that
the theropods came directly over from the Gobi Desert or Montana into a
previously empty California, but I guess that's clear enough in the
article.

Just thought I'd cover Greg's back to save him some potential embarassment.

                        John R. Hutchinson
                 Department of Integrative Biology
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