Re: Khaan's paleoecology

[Nick Longrich <longrich@alumni.princeton.edu>]

> Luc Bailly (aspidel@infonie.be) wrote:
>
> <I'm beginning a _Khaan_ drawing, and I think I'll draw it in quite 
> "steppic" landscape, eating
> _Gingkoales_ or conifer seeds.
>
> Will it work like that?>
>
>   No. The Ukhaa Tolgod locality is a dune field with outcroppings, 
> most likely, and would have
> resembles parts of the northern Sahara, edges of ergs, with a little 
> more water. Plants are not
> well-studied, but appear to be more scrub-land or rocky-desert types.

    Ephedra!

If you've ever been in the American West, you've probably seen it. 
Very cool, weird non-angiosperm (gnetophyte) which looks like a 
brushy bunch of green twigs growing out from woody sticks. Chinese 
have used it for a long time for the stimulant, known of course as 
ephedrine. Apparently, in Nevada, where just about everything else is 
legal (gambling, prostitution, beer that isn't watered down like in 
Utah), ephedrine is *illegal* w/o prescription. Something to keep in 
mind if you pick it up over the counter there. Very bizarre as it's 
also known as Mormon tea, I guess the Church disapproves of caffeine 
but not ephedrine?; anyhow it makes a very nice tea if you boil the 
stems with a bit of lemon and some honey as a sweetener. 
Unfortunately, although it is a cool plant it is impossible to root 
from cuttings and difficult to transplant, which is weird considering 
that it grows around alkali flats and in the Chihuahuan desert and 
all. If it's not the state tree (well, shrub) of Utah, it ought to be.
	That makes me think... the stuff has a heck of a 
distribution, and it's probably been around a while, so its a decent 
bet its been growing in deserts for a long time. I wonder if 
oviraptorosaurs chewed on the stuff, they look capable of handling 
some pretty tough vegetation; those jaws clearly were designed for a 
very high bending resistance. It's pretty obvious looking at 
dicynodonts that oviraptorosaurs were up to the same thing (like 
Cracraft argued), there are a number of remarkable convergences in 
the jaw structure, palate, and jaw articulation. Which would be handy 
if we figure out what dicynodonts were up to... Ephedra doesn't look 
too tasty but ground sloth coprolites have been found full of the 
stuff and I think cattle will gnaw on it, it's also very abundant 
where it grows. "Abundant" in the sense that it may not be that 
abundant but not much, and sometimes nothing, else is growing with 
it. Welwitschia-type plants? Welwitschia is an interesting one, its 
habit of growing from the base as in grass looks like an anti-grazing 
adaptation. Unless its primitive or something, many monocots, e.g. 
aloe do the same thing... it's too damn bad it's so hard to grow 
since it's an extraordinarily cool plant. 6$, aridlands.com, but 
don't try it without being able to maintain constant high 
temperatures (100+ during the day is optimum with a cool night) and 
daily waterings. Seeds available by the dozen or 100 from 
saseeds.co.za. Do either of these guys have any fossil record at all?

        Other notes:

	First reference on secondary flightlessness in dromaeosaurs 
is Paul, 1984; I think the journal is Hunteria. Also check out 
Kurzanov's suggestion that the oviraptorosaur Avimimus was  feathered 
and up to something that may have ultimately given rise to flight; it 
is possible to find English versions of some of his short articles on 
the animal. Often review articles on flight origins are pushing an 
agenda rather than conducting a review in my opinion (minority views 
are often simply treated as if they do not exist) but check out 
Witmer's for actual review of the problem, very thorough.

	Teeth in alvarezsaurs are small, straight, unserrated. They 
are present pretty extensively in the dentary. They are absent from 
the posterior maxilla, where instead a sharp bony ridge (beak?) was 
present. I'm not sure if there were any in the jaw tips. Sorta 
suspect not; to the extent that they are toothed (myrmecophages are 
weird in either eliminating teeth, or actually increasing them- giant 
armadillo has one of the highest tooth counts in mammals), 
myrmecophages tend to be gap-toothed, e.g. sloth bear,  numbat. 
Numbat is kind of cool in that the incisors move laterally to 
eliminate teeth from the front of the mouth, rather than eliminating 
any teeth, the molars have multiple simple, conical cusps lined up 
and therefore function as a series of simple teeth. Incipient 
myrmecophagy for David Letterman is supported, but as in the aardwolf 
appears to lack the fossorial specializations to open termite mounds 
and therefore may specialize on colonial insects exposed on surface. 
Feeding behavior of the talk-show host in natural habitat will be 
required to confirm or reject this biomechanical scenario.