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Small question on Glut's Encyclopdeia



Hi everybody,

Yesterday that long awaited moment had come: after at least 2 months 
my copy of "the Glut Book" arrived. It has been a long wait (and a 
lot of money, too), but as far as I can see now it was worth it. This 
will be the masterpiece of my humble little dinosaur-related library 
for quite some while. What a book!

So far I've read to about page 17 and paged through the entire book 
from cover to cover (which, even at about 5 seconds per page on 
average, still amounts to about 1,5 hours) and after the first 
chapter I plan to read the glossary very carefully and then work my 
way through the whole thing, whenever I have a bit of time for it (so 
this could take years! ;-)).

But enough rambling about this. You've all been there already, I'm 
sure. When quickly browsing through the book I found something 
strange in the list of excluded genera. In there, Smilodon is listed 
as a prolacertilian reptile (via a reference to Tanystropheus, of 
which I had never heard before). However, the only Smilodon I know is 
the most well-known sabre-toothed cat, which has as much to do with 
dinosarus, reptiles, or even the Mesozoic as we ourselves do.

So, are there two different Smilodons, or is this one of the no doubt 
numerous little errors that will always creep into books of this 
humongous size?

Thanks in advance for your answer. And of course for making me take 
the step to actually go and order such an expensive book without 
even having seen it first, just because of all your comments on it 
here in the mailinglist. You've made a very interested dinosaur 
semi-layman very happy indeed.

Jarno Peschier, computer science student, Utrecht University
   mailto:jpeschie@cs.ruu.nl    http://jarno.home.ml.org/
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    'avwI' nejDI' narghta'bogh qama' reH 'avwI' Sambej