Re: Age Abstractions

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

> Besides, I suspect that several non-avian theropod
> types did survive  
> what ever punctuated event that killed the majority
> of dinosaurian  
> types.  They lingered on in a new habitat with
> different ecological  
> niches and new food chain relationships until they
> weren't viable as  
> a population any more.  Then they followed their
> ancestors to the  
> grave as a species.  Mammals jumped in and filled
> the void.

Heh, I had a somewhat lengthy rant on this which I
didn't send b/c I thought it not important enough for
putting to the list. It sounded much the same. "What
would a surviving T. rex eat?" was probably the most
salient thing I had in and you don't ;-) 
 
> I postulate again that the Cretaceous mass
> extinction was not  
> resultant from one cause but from millions of
> accumulated occurrences  
> initiated by a myriad of events.  Some of those
> events were more  
> significant in the scheme of things obviously but
> none the less,  
> change was "BAD" for the dinosaurians except for the
> avian lineage.   
> Just like the current die off of megafauna, lots of
> events (not all  
> human) are responsible.  The chain of events was
> then/ and now is  
> complex.

In a nutshell and restricting it to terrestrial
ecosystems, a non-avian dino's world went and a
bird-and-mammal world came.

The simple fact that during the latter half of the
Mesozoic, there was an hitherto unparalleled abundance
of MEGA-anything (herbivores, carnivores). Not puny
megafauna like horses and rhinos and tigers, but the
really big guys. That alone must have had an effect on
the ecosystems, plants finding an equilibrium with
their herbivores, etc.

And what is suspect about this one is the locality.
There probably was little more inhospitable terrain in
the earliest Paleogene than the
southwestern/south-central US... if the present
estimates about impact angle of the Chixculub bolide
are correct, it received far more of the immediate
consequences (and ejecta) and relatively more of the
mid-term consequences than most other places on Earth.
The area in question must have been literally
cauterized.

If he'd had dug up his find on Chatham Island, *that*
would be interesting indeed. But this is simply
suspect.

Regards,

Eike


                
___________________________________________________________ 
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de