Re: Faunal list (Was Re: Selective Extinction)

[Chris Campbell <sankarah@ou.edu>]

Jonathon Woolf wrote:

<Snip>

> And one more factor that needs to be considered: in the Permian,
> Triassic, and Cretaceous extinctions, among land vertebrates there was a
> metabolic pattern to the survivors.  100% ectotherms like lizards and
> crocs survived, though greatly diminished.  Highly endothermic animals
> like mammals and birds survived, again with heavy losses.  Animals with
> in-between metabolisms, like dinosaurs and dicynodont therapsids, got
> the chop.  Again, that seems to be consistent with some sort of massive
> climatic disruption.  Not a disruption of food supply -- endotherms need
> more food than ectotherms -- but to something else.  And it had to be
> global in its effects, because the extinctions are global.

One small point here (well, a rather large one, actually): who says the
extinctions were global?  We always hear that and say it, but as Donald
Archibald points out in his article on the subject in the Padian/Currie
encyclopedia we don't know that.  He mentions that out of 26 KT sites
around the world some 26 are from the Western Interior of North
America.  That's a really bad sample there; in fact, I'd say that and
conclusions dealing with any sort of simultaneous extinction event are
pretty suspect based on the lack of data globally.  We don't know
extinctions were global or simulatneous, and this seems to be one of the
most common errors made in extinction theories.
 
> Matter a'fact, it occurs to me that some sort of "reverse El Nino," a
> massive cooling of tropical waters,  could have precisely those sorts of
> effects.

And, interestingly, this is entirely consistent with the regression
theory and entirely inconsistent with the impact theory (which would
presumably result in boiled/superheated waters).  It also accounts for
the froggies and sharks, who are the real buggers for the impact
theory.  

Chris