Re: Dino/Birds? was Mesozoic snow? and fund for Antonio

[Aidan Karley <aidan_karley@yahoo.co.uk>]

In article <p0621020bbed645436dad@[192.168.123.184]>, Jeff Hecht wrote:
> They also have been looking for small animals, tossing aside the bones 
> of an elephant-sized sauropod.
>
       Surely you are being hyperbolic. Surely? 
       
> They've been looking for feathers and dinosaurs, so the mammals haven't 
> been getting much attention.
>
       When I was a BSc student, one of the PhD students was studying IIRC 
Rheatic mammals in fissure 
infills from a palaeokarst. Her technique was basically to sieve 10s of kilos 
of loose rock collected 
more-or less blindly from the fissures when exposed in a quarry wall, and then 
to hand-pick the teeth under 
a stereo 'scope. Worked for her, if tedious. I think she may have tried an acid 
wash to help disaggregation. 
Has anyone tried doing this, even with the ground mass of known fossils?
       
> That's one of the frustrations, in a way -- the story isn't complete enough 
> to write 
> the definitive story.
>
       At moments like this I should refresh my memory from the book of the 
IIRC 1989 Eichstatt conference 
on Archaeopetryx, but it's in a different country. I couldn't believe such a 
substantial volume on sale for 
only about 20 DM. "Leap, grab", as Calvin and Hobbes would put it.
       
-- 
 Aidan Karley,
 Aberdeen, Scotland,
 Location: 57°10' N,  02°09'  W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233
 Written at Thu, 16 Jun 2005 07:43 +0100



                
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