Re: New publication

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

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004, Andrew A. Farke wrote:

> Just out in the latest issue of the GSA Bulletin. . .
>
> Robertson, D. S., M. C. McKenna, O. B. Toon, S. Hope, and J. A. Lillegraven.
> 2004. Survival in the first hours of the Cenozoic. GSA Bulletin 116:760-768.

Thanks for this interesting paper.

The authors argue that the prime killing mechanism was an "intense IR flux
that followed the...impact (and was) generated on a global scale by
particles that were lofted into suborbital trajectories and became
incandescent upon reentering the upper atmosphere."

But birds are a problem for the hypothesis.  While previous scenarios have
allowed either coastal crab-eating or Antarctic refugia, a global,
killing incandescence allows few hiding places for birds--at least the
kinds of birds known to have survived.  So, the solution: paddling
waterbirds have their feathers singed by the IR thus making them
permeable to water.  The downy feathers beneath soak up a cooling draft of
water.  Finally, the water-ladden bird waddles under a rock to wait out
the incandescence.

Also, they make a rather categorical claim: "Enantiornithines and most
other archaic birds disappeared before the end of the Maastrichtian in the
fossil record of the single complete well-studied terrestrial section..."

The sponge-duck idea strikes me as being rather fanciful--and untested.
What happens when you cook a bird to the point when the feathers lose
their water repellant qualities?  What happens when this suddenly
absorbent bird fills up with water?  Would such a bird, frizzled then
water-logged, have wits enough to seek shelter anywhere else but at the
bottom of the lake?