Re: DINOSAUR BEHAVIOR

[Joe Daniel <jdaniel@aristotle.net>]

You brought up many excellent points but I would warn against saying 
that certain types of behavior only seen in mammals today is implausible 
in dinosaurs.  You said it yourself, their behavior is not truly 
knowable (without time travel, very unlikely in the near future; or 
unexpected breakthroughs in extinct DNA research, hey, we're working as 
fast as we can).  One point I would like to make is that dinosaurs 
occupied several niches simply not found today in the reptilian or avian 
 repertoires.  They most likely had many behaviors not even imagined in 
modernday reptiles and birds.  Besides, many many birds show cooperative 
behaviors with high levels of complexity.  True, I don't know of 
cooperative hunting but in other aspects of life they do very well, such 
as extremely complicated nestbuilding strategies just to name the most 
obvious.  So let's not rule out cooperative hunting because they don't 
do it today.

Joe Daniel

BTW:  I have responded to a few posts that I accidentally sent privately 
rather than to the list.  Hope that clears up any confusion I may have 
caused.