Re: K-T survivors (hadrosaurs?, mammals & birds)

[Daniel Bensen <dbensen@gotnet.net>]

>>Many flower plants are notoriously
successful at fending off herbivores with bad-tasting chemicals, thorns,
"guard"-ant associations, and other bioweaponry, and hadrosaurs may not have
been able to adapt to them quickly enough.<<
Angiosperms had been evolving for (at least) forty million years by the time of
the extinction event.  Bakker makes an excellent case that much of ornithischian
diversity during the Cretaceous was due to, not despite, the presence of
angiosperms.
I suppose one could argue that all the thorny and poisonous species evolved
right after the extinction, and that for some reason herbivorous dinosaurs
(which, after all, had been eating from cycads and conifers long before flowers
came along) couldn't deal with them, but all this seems a great amount of
supposition when simple a simple mistake of nature is more likely.  Occam(or is
it Okham?)'s razor, and all that.

Dan