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I'm back from tremendous modem problems (so I got
170 mails at once and one 15 minutes later).
When I asked what furculae are actually good for I
should have written I know of the spring-like mechanism in recent flying birds;
I mean what they could have been evolved for. Neither boomerang-shaped ones
(Archaeopteryx, Sinornithosaurus, Tyrannosauridae,
Confuciusornithidae) nor broad V-shaped ones (the plesiomorphy, secondarily
evolved in Dromaeosauridae sensu stricto) could have been useful for
that.
Jibeinia is named after Yibei? Does Hou
use the first suggestion for Pinyin (from the 50's) which would have used j for
y and y for à (and the Russian letter Ñ [that 180 turned h] for
ch?
Concerning Iberomesornis and
Sinornis (both enantiornithines with reduced mt IV), have all the
people interested read the latest Sereno paper (which corrects Sereno & Rao
1992: Sinornis has no gastralia, so no known bird has)?
Concerning the dinosaur enclave in Yemen, I have a
few suggestions:
- How can someone dinosaur-size possibly
survive the Chicxulub impact (and the possible Shiva impact, which ?was even
closer)?
- "Suppose that a river/lake-living dinosaur
evolved in the Late Cretaceous of Africa [...]" Rather impossible; this niche
was held by crocodiles (and a few freshwater plesiosaurs and
hesperornithiforms).
- How do you reliably keep the dinos in and
modern animals like vultures out for 65 ma? Besides, terrestrial pure carrion
eaters are probably impossible (as stated in every discussion on T.
rex). Any carrion eaters there will certainly be the vultures common in the
surroundings.
- No Mongolian dinosaurs, meaning ABSOLUTELY NO
TYRANNOSAUROIDS, no ceratopsids, no protoceratopsians (except maybe if
the aff. Leptoceratops ulna from Early Cretaceous Australia is
protoceratopsian), and so on. There was the Tethys ocean between Iran +
Turkey and Iraq, and the Asian mainland ended east of the Caspian Sea and
the Ural which was an island of its own. There was no connection between
Mongolia and the Middle East.
- Dromaeosaurs are possible, since they were around
in Sudan (but not Velociraptor in person!), troodontids are probably
not (Troodon has been reported from Argentina, as far as I know, but
that was after Africa split off. Maybe Africa was still connected to India and
India via KerguÃlen to Antarctica. Same holds for hadrosaurs.).
- Oviraptorosaurs are possibly known from Early
Cretaceous Australia. To my mind it's quite probable they ate e. g. water snails
(plentiful in the Gobi).
- Why reevolve spinosaurs from allosauroids when
there plenty of spinosaurs in Africa?
- Feel free to include a few birds
(enantiornithines...).
- Rather use too many (proto)feathers than too few.
Who knows whether e. g. Noasaurus was feathered? Be careful with lizard
analogies.
- Probably abelisaurids were around (there is only negative evidence,
though, except those "Majungasaurus" scraps from Egypt). -
Juveniles and adults filling different niches is only possible if the young are
very, very precocial (and grow rather slowly) -- not probable for
dinosaurs.- Island habitats often cause large animals to
shrink and vice versa -- there were e. g. giant badgers
(Deinogalerix) in Neogene southern Italy.
- I would include terrestrial crocodiles
(notosuchids and... Honored Person Brochu knows which else were around in
Africa); they could have evolved into pretty anything, because they did -- there
were herbivorous crocodilomorphs (Phyllodontosuchus,
?Edentosuchus or whatever the name, Chimaerasuchus,
Simosuchus), for example. There are even people around believing
Terrestrisuchus was arboreal (or that something similar might have
become).
- What mammals were there around in Africa at the
time?
- Standing up like meerkats (interesting that you
use the word; Meerkatzen [literally "sea cats" -- compare
mermaids] in German) really is something only mammals do --
never seen a bird or lizard or croc doing likewise.
- "The Ottoman Empire or the Turks" -- one and the
same, since the first Turkish leader notorious in history was called
Osman.
- Don't you put the Bermuda Triangle as something
mystical. It seems that this is simply an area where methane hydrate is
decaying, creating occasional blobs of methane gushing upwards. Ships can't swim
on foam, and planes get serious problems without oxygen, so both sink and
disappear.
- Sad that you want to use Yemen in the first
place. E. g. New Zealand would really be better.
- "a gradual transformation into something
frightening happening so slowly that people don't realize the danger"
("philidor11") Why has it to be danger again? Do we need another bunch of
JP/Lost World monsters? Isn't the thrill of discovery enough? Can't there be a
happy end?
Where/when/why have the few ornithomimosaurian
teeth I quoted become a complete skeleton?
What age is the Kimmeridge Clay?
Kimmeridgian?
Why are Crocodylus and all taxon
names derived from that (-inae, -idae, -iformes, -omorpha, -otarsi...) always
written with y? It's krokodeilos in Greek and (therefore) crocodilus in Latin
(I've checked the dictionary to be sure).
As far as I know, Chimaerasuchus is
thought to be notosuchid (bit out of place...)
I'll read the new Rossmann article on
Pristichampsus (German is my mother tonge, huh, huh, heh,
heh...)
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