Re: CROCODILE ?MYTHS?

[Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>]

> Will someone *please* ask Bakker _why_ he thinks that _Utahraptor_ originated
> in Mongolia? In Raptor Red he says that the characters in the book actually 
> grew
> up in Mongolia, and, within their lifetime, spread across Beringia. He also
> reckons that the giant dromaeosaurs reported recently from Asia are 
> utahraptors
> too, but he adds that _Utahraptor_ spread westwards _back_ into Asia - I know
> this is fiction, but he must have some evidence in mind. If so, we could never
> know whether an Asian utahraptor was a ancestor of an American species (before
> spreading east) or a later immigrant from an ancestral American species. Help!

    I suspect that was just for the story's sake.  If you are going to 
write a book set in the Mesozoic, you have to fill in the blank spaces in 
knowledge to make a three-diomensional world. FOr instance, we don't know 
what color they were, but if you are going to do artwork or fiction, you 
have to color them SOMETHING.  I think the Mongolian descent thing was 
the same sort of thing.  No reason to think so, but he had to give them a 
history.

LN Jeff