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Re: cause of Gigantism in sauropods
- To: dinosaur <dinosaur@usc.edu>
- Subject: Re: cause of Gigantism in sauropods
- From: Heinrich Mallison <heinrich.mallison@googlemail.com>
- Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 09:30:04 +0100
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> There seems to be something weird going on with sauropods -- probably
> important -- but what was it???
>
> William Miller
William, it is not something, but a whole LOT of somethings, and it is
nicely detailed in Sander et al. 2010 :) What allows the enormous size
of sauropods is a unique combination of primitive and derived traits:
small skulls, no oral food processing, no gastric mill, long necks,
avian-style lung, high reproductive rate with minimal investment, and
so on. I recommend a look at figure 9 of Sander et al. 2010.
Sander, P.M. et al (2010): Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the
evolution of gigantism. Biological Reviews 86(1):117–155, doi:
10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00137.x