Re: late night thoughts: misunderstand what?

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Don Ohmes wrote:

> 2). The record of sauropods in general seems to be one of increasing size,

Ummm... maybe not.

http://dml.cmnh.org/2007May/msg00294.html
http://dml.cmnh.org/2006Dec/msg00201.html

The gist of this is that although most sauropod lineages included big (VERY 
big) taxa, these same lineages tended to end with smaller taxa.

> Does the way the sauropod record fizzled out (in terms of diversity) 
> falsify the notion that no >matter how big a given long-neck got, the 
> bipeds just got taller, and the TBJ's finally 'won'?

Regarding sauropod diversity, I wouldn't say this is necessarily true.  It 
is true that most Late Cretaceous sauropods belong to a single group: the 
Titanosauria.  However, the titanosaurs were a VERY diverse group, both 
phylogenetically and morphologically (by sauropod standards).  The fact that 
most LK sauropods have been traditionally lumped into a single family 
("Titanosauridae") has tended to understate what a diverse clade the 
Titanosauria actually was.

Cheers

Tim

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