Re: [Re: [Suchomimus tenerensis]]

["Caleb Lewis" <christianwarior7@hotmail.com>]

>
>> >If it tried it's jaws would snap under the stress. And if it used 
other 
>
>> body
>
>> >parts to kill it's prey, then why evolve the long jaws in the first 
>
>> place.
>
>> 
>
>> Why not? If they had no use then they can evolve any which way that 
they 
>> want. Evolution occurs (and this will seem very trivial to all you 
>> people who already know this obviously)when a mutation or something 
>> similar happens to take place, and that creature goes on to grow up 
and 
>> survives to breed and pass on that trait to his young when he (I 
>> apologize to all the women out there for putting all this into the 
male 
>> form) mates, and eventually that species goes on to replace the 
previous 
>> species, for whatever reason. So those jaws could easily have evolved 
in 
>> whatever fashion, regardless if they were or were not used.
>===================================================================
>================================================================
>
>Ahh yes, but don't forget Natural Selection usually does a good job of 
weeding
>out all the useless bodyparts and forms. In order for a body part like 
that to
>have kept evolving (assuming it was useless) would be if the animal 
never even
>bothered with it.
>
>Which brings up the next problem. These "useless" bodyparts are the 
jaws. Out
>of all the external parts of the body, the jaws are by far the most 
important
>(well with animals that is and in most cases). So in order for a 
"useless"
>trait in the jaws to develop, Suchomimus would have to have found a new 
way to
>eat.
>
>Hence why the evolution of useless jaws doesn't seem to work. No these 
jaws
>were specialized for whatever the animal ate.
>


Careful, you're anthropomorphizing evolution.


>So what did it eat?
>
>Other than fish, the other idea that I like is the one that someone had
>already posted on the list. About Sucho tearing open insect nests and 
such and
>then rooting it's snout in their for the food. Kinda like a Baryonyx
>Deinocheirus mix.


So, if we go along with your line of reasoning, _Succhomimus_ would 
never have grown so large. You stated that evolution has a way of 
"weeding out all the useless bodyparts and forms." well, if it was an 
insectivore, then the size was useless, and it would not have grown to 
be so large.
   Second, could you imagine how many pound of insects that thing 
would've had to eat in a day to maintain itself at that size??


>The only problem with this theory is the teeth. Why not just a nice 
mobile
>tongue instead. Regardless of how much bigger termites were back then, 
I'm
>sure they were still comparitively small enough to syphon rather than 
snap.

That's another good point.

>
>There is only one other idea that comes to mind. Perhaps it rooted 
little
>dinosaurs and other animals out from their burrows. That could explain 
the
>jaws and the claws.

I'm skeptical with that one too. First off, it would have to find the 
burrows, which shouldn't actually be that much of a hard thing, but to 
use a point that someone had made earlier on this list, the forearms 
were a little short for effective fishing; I'm sure that would also 
apply to digging.
   Second, it would have to eat a fairly good number of them, which 
means more digging and searching (though I'm not saying a exponential 
amount of small organisms).
   Third, animals, from observations of animals today (which is probably 
a faulty arguement) that burrow ussualy take preventinve measure from 
predators' shouts coming in and dragging them out, like digging deeper 
or farther back burrows.

>
>Considering how nature works, the animal probably did all three.
>
>
>Archosaur J
>
>Jurassosaurus's Reptipage: A page devoted to the study of the reptilia
>
>http://members.tripod.com/~jurassosauridae/index.html
>
>____________________________________________________________________
>Get free e-mail and a permanent address at 
http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1
>


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com