Re: Sinosauropteryx at Dinofest

["Ralph Miller III" <gbabcock@best.com>]

> Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com> wrote:
> Eyes are usually the first thing to be eaten by scavenging
> invertebrates.  It's been my observation that eyes do not survive in
> modern roadkills any longer than 24 hours after death.  So this
> interment must have completly covered the individual within that amount
> of time.  Is there signs of such a rapid interment?  Or alternatively,
> are there signs all the scavenging invertebrates in the area were also
> killed at the same time as the birds and dinos (leaving nothing left to
> eat the eyes out)?

I can't positively answer that last question -- hopefully, someone else
will -- but, given that the formation has been described in _Nature_ and
_Discover_ magazines as a "Cretaceous Pompeii" which may have preserved
nearly "a complete biota" such a scenario sounds plausible to me.  I read
that the animals and plants may have been quickly killed by either
poisonous gases or volcanic ashfall (or both).

-- Ralph Miller III     gbabcock@best.com