Re: Mesozoic biomass

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Entire e-mail repeated because it came with the truncation message attached:

----- Original Message -----
From: <FlxLandry@aol.com>
Subject: Re: Mesozoic biomass

> Hi!
> You wrote:
>
> >In essence, it  is like the African savannahs with size of predators and 
> >prey
> >magnified  by a factor of 5-10.  So were number of predators & prey 1/5 
> >or
> >1/10 of Holocene norms?
>
> I think that would be our best  bet. A more precise factor could be 
> estimated
> by evaluating whether 1) the  Mesozoic ecosystem you're studying was 
> richer
> or poorer in plant material than  the African savannah and 2) how much 
> bigger
> the dinos were as an average.

And then the population sizes and densities of the dinos... :-S

> I  fear that extending this mode of thinking to the whole planet would 
> lead
> to  freakingly approximative calculations. As has already been said, after 
> a
> good  estimate is known for a few significant ecosystems (could the 
> Morrison be
> considered as an individual "ecosystem"? Bakker used to consider whole
> formations as ecosystems in Dino Heresies, but I fear this is not a very 
> rigorous
> approach), little more than relative estimations could be  done.
>
> Félix

A year ago or something (is it perhaps in Mesozoic Vertebrate Life???) I 
remember reading an article by Bakker and some others about a 
"criminalistic" approach to investigating several ecosystems within the 
Morrison Fm by investigating isolated teeth and fish scales. Includes the 
idea that *Ceratosaurus* hunted lungfish -- 4 m long lungfish.