Re: New dinosaur from South America

[Michael de Sosa <ofsosa@uclink4.berkeley.edu>]

> why.  Perhaps these large theropods were evolving to increasingly larger 
> sizes because of the evolving sauropods, or the other way around.

Heh... sort of reminds me of the chicken and the egg thing.  Which started 
growing first?

What about Tyrannosaurus?  It's not much smaller than the Argentineans, and all 
of it's prey (hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, etc) were smaller than it, right?  
Probably no sauropods around, at least that we know of.  So why did it get so 
big?

I think that the size of these theropods IS important though, not in the 
competition sense, but from a more scientific evolutionary standpoint.  Huge 
animals do not just evolve to impress us humans, there had to be a reason.  And 
what was it about Argentina that inspired such gigantic sizes?  Was it just a 
sort of arms race between the carcharodontosaurids and the titanosaurs?

Only time and hard work will tell.

--
Michael A. de Sosa
Undergraduate Student
University of California - Berkeley
ofsosa@uclink4.berkeley.edu

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