Baby dinosaurs

["Colin McHenry" <cmchenry@westserv.net.au>]

--

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>The headlines:

>**  Outback 'dinosaur breeding area'
>Scientists at the South Australian Museum may have discovered a dinosaur
>breeding ground in the state's north that could become the focus of
>international attention


Before anyone gets too excited, they're talking about baby plesiosaurs (even
though I think that's much more exciting than baby dinosaurs).

A similar annoucement was made last year, when the SAM mob put out a press
release showing a small piece of a plesiosaurian mandibular symphysis, and
claimed that it was from a baby plesiosaur, and that this constituted
evidence of a plesiosaur breeding grown a la ichthyosaurs at Holzmaden.
Looks like the latest news is a follow up to this.

I'd be happy to be proved wrong on this - a find of plesiosaur neonates
would be very, very exciting - but I have to say I'm skeptical.  Some of
what was said last year seemed to be stretching the available fossil
evidence (one small piece of bone) to incredible conclusions for the benefit
of getting media coverage.  I know we have to dress up our finds for the
news crews...but to say that one scrap of bone indicates a entirely new
aspect of plesiosaur palaeobiology?  I wish they wouldn't do that.

The picture that got into the newspapers looked to me like an unremarkable
piece of jaw from a large adult Leptocleidus.  It actually looked bigger
than the equivelant bone on Eric, the famous opalised pliosaur (yes, he's a
Leptocleidus) that was found in South Australia a few years back.  Since
then I've heard nothing more about this specimen.

Dan, you keep up with this stuff....  Have they shown it to be juvenile
plesiosaur?  Did I miss the most significant development in marine reptiles
in the last decade? Or is this just more hype from the Flannery media
machine?

Cheers
Colin



"If the vertebrate fossil record of Australia tells us anything, it is this;
dinosaurs, bad; plesiosaurs, good."

Colin McHenry
56 Gaskill St
CANOWINDRA,  NSW 2804,  Australia
Ph: +61 2 6344 1009
Mobile phone: 0428 131 858
email: cmchenry@westserv.net.au