Re: Selective Extinction

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

T. Mike Keesey wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Dann Pigdon wrote:
> 
> >       Then again, there were a lot of small species of dinos that
> > seem to have been wiped out too, although birds seem to have made it
> > through fine and presumably they were in a similar size group to
> > small non-avian dinos.
> 
> Were there any small non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous?
> Dromaeosaurids, oviraptorosaurs, troodontids, and hypsilophodonts aren't
> *that* small. Not as small as the average bird, anyway.
> 
> --T. Mike Keesey
> tkeese1@gl.umbc.edu
> http://umbc.edu/~tkeese1 -- Dinosaur Web Pages

        If there were small birds and mammals about, as well as
reptiles, them I'd be very surprised if there were no dinos in
the size range of, say, modern song birds. They were certainly about
during the Triassic (?) in Nova Scotia. Taphonomic processes tend to
bias fossil remains towards larger material, so if there are no
fossil remains of such micro-dinos of Late Maastrichtian age then
perhaps it's just an artefact of preservation. Absence of evidence
is not necessarily evidence of absence (I know, a convenient cop-out,
but at least it MAY have been true).
-- 
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        Dann Pigdon
        Melbourne, Australia

        Dinosaur Reconstructions:
        http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/4459/
        Australian Dinosaurs:
        http://www.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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