Something else just occured to me.

[His Dark Lordship <darklord@compusmart.ab.ca>]

A recent tidbit of info that came across my way is how, due to the fact the
moon is ever so slowly pulling away from the earth, the years become
1/5000th of a second shorter each year, as well as the tides become more
intense.

Anyway, I whipped out my calculator and did the math. For every 18 million
years we go back, the year is one moment longer (Wow. =P) howver, the tides
were (I would assume, anyway) considerably more intense, which *might*
allow for creatures to make use of areas that would normally be under the
ocean for good parts of the time.

Maybe the effect the Moon had on the tides also would have affected the
temperatures.

I'm not ruling out my Ice Age idea, but it certainly seems unlikely at best.
=) At the same time, however, I must point out that if you're going to have
sub-tropical humidity in northern canada (compared to how hot it is here in
Edmonton right now, I could stand to be a bit further north. =P) one could
imagine the types of storms that occured and the frequency of them.