Re: so, would it be surprising, or not, to find an almost identical specimen of a dino (say, allosaurus)....

[Renato Santos <dracontes@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 3:19 PM, Brian Hathaway <hammeris1@att.net> wrote:
> so, would it be surprising, or not, to find an almost identical specimen of a 
> dino (say, allosaurus)
> in strata 30 million years apart with virtually no change?
> Or does the environment of post-Cretaceous Aves allow for a species to remain
> virtually unchanged for many millions of years?

It would be intriguing, yes, and worthy of speculation and/or investigation.

Off the top of my head there's nothing preventing populations from
having morphological evolutionary stasis. Selective pressures acting
on morphology not being strong enough to have a meaningful effect
would allow for that. There's also the fact that all we generally have
are the bones and these aren't the whole animal: soft tissue,
physiology and behavior can change without outwardly affecting bone
morphology.


-- 
Renato Santos
http://dracontes.deviantart.com