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Re: Gastric stones of dinosaurs were not for milling food !
For those who don't mind questioning the steady-state N2 partial pressure
assumption: as any farm boy knows, the application of nitrogen fertilizer
to pastures increases both mass-specific biomass nutritional values and
per acre biomass production per unit time. It seems logical on a
'mechanical' basis that a lightning stroke would produce free nitrogen in
proportion to N2 partial pressure, w/ obvious implications for herbivores,
although the response of nitrogen-fixing bacteria to an increase in
ambient N2 pressure is unclear, at least to me.
Cycads live in symbiosis with N2-fixing cyanobacteria...
there are obvious attractions for those who wonder how in the heck those
huge critters gathered enough leaf-mass in the course of 24 hours to
support themselves.
That "problem" has been solved long ago: have a look at the size of a
sauropod skull, and then take into account that they didn't waste time
chewing. Not everyone is a mammal.