RE: Snowmastodons

[Anthony Docimo <keenir@hotmail.com>]

> > From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu] 
> > On Behalf Of Anthony Docimo
 
sorry...thought it was still Plain Text - its Plain now.
 
 
> > > This week's NOVA on PBS, "Ice Age Death Trap" is about the 
> > > mastodon-intensive fossil fauna collected up at Snowmass, Colorado, 
> > > this past year.
> > > 
> > > (Sadly, my on-screen guide describes it this way: 
> > Archaeologists study 
> > > the life and death of North America's most exotic and extreme
> > > creatures.) B-(
> > 
> > well yes - native camels and elephants...in a predator-free 
> > enviroment.
> 
> Predator free?!?! Not so much: Smilodon, Arctodus, Panthera, Canis, etc.

the documentary said there were no predator bones in the deposits. (as opposed 
to the La Brea Tar Pits, where trapped herbivores lure carnivores to die there 
with them)


> > Also seriously, the documentary proposed liquifaction as a 
> > reason why the mammoths were trapped and unable to escape 
> > (thus having so many of all ages there).....the only time 
> > I've heard this suggested for the Mesozoic, was the "Dino 
> > Death Trap" {National Geographic Channel} where _Guanlong_ 
> > and "an unidentified species of carnivore" were discovered, 
> > stacked one on top of another.
> >
> Technical publication at:
> http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2110/palo.2009.p09-028r
> http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.2110/palo.2009.p09-028r

Thank you.

> (the "unidentified species" is Limusaurus).

much appreciated.


> > Were there other cases of Mesozoic liquifaction, or do the 
> > pressures of it being so distant an epoch help to conflate 
> > liquifaction with other capture methods as seen through the 
> > fossil record?
> > 
> Don't know of other cases. Liquefaction should leave a distinctive 
> sedimentological signature, which makes it nicely testable.
>