Re: Large last gasp of pterosaurs

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

On Thu, 22 Jan 2004, Jeff Hecht wrote:

> What you're postulating is the compromise scenario I've seen
> suggested for the dinosaurs elsewhere -- the pterosaurs were
> vulnerable because they were in a long, slow decline and the K-T
> impact finished them off. The conventional view of the extinction of
> the trilobites at the Permo-Triassic boundary is just that -- they
> had been in a long decline, and the P-Tr finished the last of them.
> If that's true, what "killed the pterosaurs"  becomes a matter of
> definition, although I'd say it tends to be splitting hairs.

Except that this then opens up the far more interesting question of what
complex ecological factors actually killed most pterosaurs.