Re: Armadillos at the K/T!

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Fri, 12 Oct 2001 Dinogeorge@aol.com wrote:

> This thread, of which the above is but a small excerpt, is something like 
> arguing that a person shot in the liver died of liver failure rather than of 
> being shot. The bolide was the primary cause; it may of course have set off 
> chains of secondary causes that led to the extinctions of various different 
> groups in various different environments.

I believe this may be true.  But then the question becomes more
interesting: why some groups hit and not others?  And, why was it just one
body plan that was wiped out forever?  And in what way was the biota
structured such that a hit at this time may have had very different
effects than a hit at some earlier time.  These questions are more
difficult but more interesting (to biologists anyway).
But the analogy is a poor one.  Is the liver Yucatan?  In terms of
killing a biota (which it didn't) a more analagous analogy might be some
diffuse killer like ??? which only kills selected cells.