Re: Armadillos at the K/T!

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> Also, they _must_ be considered the leading culprits
> in pterosaur extinction.  Who else but birds could reach them where it
> hurts--on their nesting grounds. This would seem a source of mortality
> which would blight all pterosaurs.  I can think of lots of other causes
> for individual ptrosaurs, but none for all.

What could reach them _everywhere_, where it hurts most as well as where it
hurts least, as well as everything else...? :-)

> So, if birds impacted
> pterosaur populations, they may have done the same to dinosaur
> populations.

You do know that you argue from no evidence here? You imply the fast
appearance of nest-raiding Neornithes just before the K-T. The few
unequivocally known LK Neornithes are various waders ("transitional
shorebirds" and presbyornithids) and loons, unlikely to unable to raid any
nest. For phylogenetic reasons many other types (hen-/tinamou-like ones)
must have been present, but probably nothing ecologically similar to crows
or gulls. Oh, yes, *Ichthyornis*, which is much older than the K-T :-)

I forgot the putative parrot jaw. While I have yet to find the paper that
says it is something different (somewhere in Nature 1999), this doesn't
exactly look like a vast radiation of parrots... and do any living parrots
raid nests?