Re: hadrosaurid speed again (was: Maastrichtian extinction)

[John Conway <john_conway@mac.com>]

On Friday, November 15, 2002, at 10:34  PM, Tim Donovan wrote:

> [...] and faster speed- conferred by longer legs- to catch it. IMHO, 
> it isn't at all surprising that taxa which seem least able to resist 
> attack or flee-the nearly hornless centrosaurines and relatively short 
> legged, bulky lambeosaurs, respectively-were eclipsed by 
> Tyrannosaurus. It reprsented a major leap in predatory capability, and 
> not all of the contemporaries of Albertosaurus could adapt.

I think Rob Gay's post on hadrosaurid limb proportions falsified your 
hypothesis that lambeosaurines were slower than hadrosaurines. You have 
cited no references and given no data to support your (often repeated) 
opinion; and you never answered Rob's post.

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2002Oct/msg00656.html

Similarly, you have not provided any data to support the conclusion 
that longer legged animals are faster, and when presented with evidence 
to the contrary:

http://www.cmnh.org/dinoarch/2002Nov/msg00006.html

you simply ignore it.

So please, supply us with _actual data_, not just restatements of 
opinion, it's getting tiresome. In particular I would like to see data 
that supports the conclusion that longer legs = faster in medium to 
large sized animals, and that the small differences observed in 
hadrosaurine/lambeosaurine leg length would have a significant effect 
on speed.