Bakker's Brontosaurus and Late Cretaceous populations

[Mike Lima <taradosgon@yahoo.com>]

A couple years back I had heard that Bakker considered
Brontosaurus a valid genus separate from Apatosaurus
and had tried to find out what anatomical differences
he noted between the two genera but couldn't find
anything beyond statements to the effect of "Dr.
Bakker is finding evidence to support his claim that
Brontosaurus is a valid genus." Now a couple years
later, I tried to find more on the subject but I'm
still only finding similar vague statements. Has
Bakker ever published or even stated on what grounds
he distinguishes between the two?

Also rather recently I found videotapes of a PBS four
episode series simply called "The Dinosaurs" that my
mom bought me when I was a kid and watched them again.
In one of the episodes Bakker explains why he doesn't
feel that a comet killed the dinosaurs, mentioning how
frogs are very sensitive creatures and would have been
the first to die, yet survived. One thing he said was
that before their sudden disappearance from the fossil
record the dinosaurs were already dying out. This
blatantly contradicts what another paleontologist in a
different episode of the same series says, claiming
they were thriving. I could be mistaken, but in "When
Dinosaurs Roamed America" I thought something was
mentioned that in the time leading right up to their
extinction that there was a relatively low number of
species yet in an issue of National Geographic from
1999 on Sue, it explains that the dinosaurs were
rapidly diversifying. How can their be such blatant
contradictions on the matter?


                
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