RE: Dinosaurs, Size, and Land Area

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Wed, 5 Dec 2001 HPB1956@aol.com wrote:

> "Dinosaur populations may have consisted mostly of posthatchling juveniles 
> ..." 

One would think that crocs would be worth looking at here.  My
understanding is that little crocs areculled fairly quickly.  meanwhile,
large crocs are immune from predation and once in that size range, exist
for a long time enabling a swelling of adult population.  Numbers, anyone?





> "Low population levels of adult dinosaurs enabled individual adults to 
> consume relatively large portions of the available resource base, thereby 
> becoming larger than mammals." 
> 
> This may have been the reason why dinosaurs were better suited to reach 
> bio-physiological limits regarding size than mammals.
> 
> The sky is the limit for dinosaurs, wherever that may be. So I think that we 
> will see bigger dinosaurs of new genera and individuals of known genera, 
> surpassing currently supposed theoretical limits.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> 
> Heinz Peter Bredow
> 
>