RE: any "Dino-skunks"? (now mimicry )

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of Ken
Kinman
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 3:38 AM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Re: any "Dino-skunks"?


Matt,
     But the point is that mimicry has little to do with skeletal
differences that we use to identify, because the predator only sees the
outside of the body.  If you were a predator who had had one or more bad
experiences with a spotted skunk, and later on caught a glimpse of an animal
of the same general size (with the same spotted pattern) running through the
grass or brush, you would almost certainly hesitate (probably long enough
for the animal to escape), or perhaps even head the other way.  It is rather
unlikely you are going to go full speed after it to get a close enough look
to see if it another skunk or not.
     That is why mimicry is a rather common occurrence.   A large number of
spiders (in a variety of different families) are ant-mimics.  Not only the
body shape, but they often run around in the jerky manner that many ants do.
  Of course, the reason this works is that many spider predators don't like
the taste of ants.
     Mimicry certainly isn't 100% effective, but if looking like an ant or a
skunk is even 50% effective in getting predators to avoid you, or at least
hesitate, sooner or later you are probably going to get a mimicks evolving
to take advantage of it.
     As for Protarcheopteryx, I think it is probably closer to Oviraptorids
than are the therizinosaurs.  Between Protarcheopteryx and Oviraptorids
would be Families Caenagnathidae and Caudipteridae, and possibly genus
Beipiaosaurus (but probably not segnosaurs).  The similarities between
Protarcheopteryx and Caudipteryx are almost certainly due to their being
closely related.
      Biologists can fairly easily tell a monarch from a viceroy butterfly,
and even a therizinosaur from an ornithomime, but if viceroys can fool
modern birds into thinking they are monarchs, then I think therizinosaurs or
ornithomimes could also have developed mimicry that would have fooled their
predators, at least part of the time.<<

This is something that I've brought up on the list before. Can we now, with
all the known dinosaurs, state whether or not some of the animals actually
'mimicing' other dinosaurs? I.e. Buffetaut et al's belief that Pelicanimimus
mimicking ornithimimids? Or to put it in a more accurately, are they
mimicking a body morph? (Yea I've heard how Pelicanimimus is an ornithimimid
by some of youse guys, but the skull is just plain wrong).

Are other dinosaurs mimicking a body morph and do not belong in the current
family (group, clade, what ever) that they are placed in? I've also asked a
few paleontologist about this very thing a few months ago. IF, and yes this
is a big IF, if this is true, then what?

Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074