Dinocentric

[Philidor11@aol.com]

In a message dated 9/14/99 10:54:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mbonnan@hotmail.com writes:

<< P.S. to Dan Varner: Of course size matters!  That's why sauropods are the 
 best dinosaurs around -- they beat theropods for body length and body size 
 any day. =) >>

Ignoring saurocentrism (rarer than therocentrism and less specialized than 
trexicentrism; hard to say what to make of sauropedicentrism, seems 
eccentric), size is one of the first ways we make sense of something new.  If 
you were told only the name of a newly discovered dinosaur, once you learned 
where, when, and what was discovered, and perhaps the animal's broad 
classification, wouldn't your first direct question be about how big it was, 
what it weighed, etc.?  Relative size is a way of giving some context to more 
than one animal.
Of course, implicit is the boast that your favorite dinosaur could smoosh my 
favorite dinosaur, but we have outgrown the smoosh factor, right?