Re: "Digging Dinosaurs"

[Betty Cunningham <bettyc@flyinggoat.com>]

Smaller, lighter dinosaurs probably DID inhabit wetlands.  Lots of
quadrapeds do it now.

Wetlands become quagmires though for the larger, heavier dinosaurs. 
Apart from sinking into the muck at every footstep, keeping a large
dinosaur dry enough not to grow it's own crop of funguses and molds in
each and every fold of skin would be a very big hassle.  
And that's without discussing endo or ecto.

-Betty

John Bois wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 29 Jul 1999, Allan Turner wrote:
> > others had before him, that it was possible dinosaurs nested in the
> > "uplands."  This made sense because the lowlands would have been too swampy
> > for eggs.
> 
> I would have to disagree with this assumption. Wetlands have always been a
> haven for egg layers.  They provide great cover at low predator-density.
> Mammals hate 'em.  In the Mesozoic dinosaurs may or may not have used them
> as a refuge.  It depends on how wet the wetlands are.  It also depends on
> the egg layers metabolism.  mammals do not do well  in wetlands because
> they wind up heating the whole swamp with their body.  This leads to
> hypothermia. Crocs are fine.  How about dinos?  Were they endothermic???
> Even if they were endothermic they may have been able to utilize wetlands.
> Perhaps bipedalism meant that only a small part of their body was
> immersed.  Of course it's all guesswork, but at a minimum, swamp-laying
> cannot be ruled out _a priori_.

-- 
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