Re: Tropical fish and Triceratops, a question of intellect.

["Martin Barnett" <martin.barnett3@virgin.net>]

Dave Benson said:
> elephents (which do herd and have a definate social structure) are very
> damaging they are to their environment if the population is too
> condensed, as we see in African wildlife preserves.

And there unfortunately lies the problem with comparing large herbivorous
dinosaurs to elephants.  As Dr Bakker rightly pointed out, elephants are
large animals forced to live in a world that is rapidly shrinking due to
human interference.  First man moves into an area, cuts down trees to make
farm land and then accuses the elephants of destroying their crop.
Elephants have a reputation for damaging their environment only because
their environment is coveted by man.  Roads instead of shrubs, villages
instead of woods, arid ruined lands instead of fertile scrub.  Add to that
the protection of man's interests by randomly killing 10 lions for every one
reported maneater, thus reducing in number the elephant's natural predator
(check national Geographic archives for report on lion prides that only feed
on baby elephants)  anyway, I don't want to start a thread on zoology so
I'll get back to the point:  Before man, the elephant was not too big for
it's environment, therefore I fail to see how a Triceratops (I love the name
too) herd would be.  Okay so Dr Holtz said conifer forests were wider spread
than modern forests due to the root formation of conifers, but then wouldn't
that leave more roots to munch on.
Yours,
           Samuel Barnett