Re: Terrapins: At Well Past 100, They're in the Mood

[Jura <pristichampsus@yahoo.com>]

--- David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

> > But there are hazards to letting the weather
> determine your sex.
> > A few years ago Spotila and Penn Veterinary School
> paleontologist Peter 
> > Dodson wrote a paper suggesting that temperature
> may have determined the 
> > sex of dinosaurs.
> > When a catastrophic event altered the climate 65
> million years ago, 
> > turtles managed to adjust, perhaps evolving a
> lower female-producing 
> > temperature, while dinosaurs could have gone years
> without hatching 
> > females. If that was the case, Spotila says, "the
> last dinosaur was a 
> > frustrated male."
> 
> Here we have the other discussion. The good
> Professor Spotila simply applies 
> logic:
> 
> Reptiles let their sex be determined by temperature.
> Dinosaurs are reptiles.
> Therefore dinosaurs let their sex be determined by
> temperature.
> 
> But his premises are trash, and the Linnaean system
> prevents him from seeing 
> this. See? This is how paraphyletic groups are
> positively misleading. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I'd have to disagree here. As HP Ronald Orenstein
mentioned, Spotila knows his turtles, and also knows
that not all of them used TDSD. The initial statement
you made above is false. Not all reptiles use TDSD.
Many use genetics instead. 

Hence why the article used the qualifier: may. As in
dinosaurs "may have" used it.

Jason

"I am impressed by the fact that we know less about many modern [reptile] types 
than we do of many fossil groups." - Alfred S. Romer

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