Re: Sauropod Musings

["King, Norm" <nking.ucs@smtp.usi.edu>]

With reference to the question of herding sauropods, Virginia Tidwell 
wrote (9/16/98; 10:45p):

>>The majority of sauropod quarries in the Morrison FM contain only one 
or two specimens.  This may indicate that herding may have been a 
specialized behavior, say, for migration purposes.<<

What determined the location and size of Morrison FM dinosaur quarries?  
I think it had more to do with today's topography, the structure of the 
sedimentary layers, and how much effort is required to excavate.  After 
all, how big would a quarry have to be to expose a herd of sauropods, and 
how difficult would it be to keep digging back into the rock to possibly 
expose more individuals?  Imagine a quarry that exposed a herd of 
Seismosaurus!

Consider also the quarry at Dinosaur National Monument--lots of 
individuals there.  They didn't just drop in their tracks; they were 
washed in by stream action.  Were the victims part of a herd, or were 
they wandering around in solitary fashion? 

In a herd, do the individuals all die at once, or do they die one at a 
time in different locations?

Of course, these are just rhetorical questions to illustrate my point 
that we can't tell much about sauropod herding on the basis of a perhaps 
over-simplified analysis of the quarries. 


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Norman R. King                                       tel:  (812) 464-1794
Department of Geosciences                            fax:  (812) 464-1960
University of Southern



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Norman R. King           f