Re: back to science

["Jaime Headden" <jaemei@hotmail.com>]

  I have only one or two comments to add to an otherwise excellent 
prognosis of the evidence, Dave, and while scarce, there is a lot to 
said from so little "hard fact" if a person looks close enough, or even 
pulls back to look at the whole picture. You've done this.

  You wrote:
<..The extremely large size of adult sauropods combined with their
endothermy...>

  Jim Farlow gives a good argument on why endothermy would be 
detrimental to a sauropod's survival (it would overheat, basically, buit 
he goes into greater detail elsewhere (somewhere on the list, I think, 
as well as TV)). But even being an ectotherm, where I feel a slight 
agreement in Jim's direction, the animal would still require the food, 
and mass would give heat. Mass ectotherms, like green sea turtles, whose 
sheer volume and mass give it an otherwise endothermic ability to 
survive at cold and warm environments.

  Being ectothermic in no way detracts from the rest of your theory.

<...This precluded a lay them and leave them strategy. (Actually, no 
living archosaur descendant to my knowledge has such as strategy, so it 
is doubtful whether any dinosaur did.)>

  The cuckoos have that "lay 'em and leave 'em" habit, for which they 
are singularly famous.

  Anyway, great work, Dave.

  Jaime A. Headden

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