Re: Morrison Sauropods\etc. (long)

[Justin Tweet <thescelosaurus@juno.com>]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001 21:14:24 +0200 "aspidel" <aspidel@infonie.be> writes:
> Hi,
>
> Something I wonder... There's a diversity of food preference among
> our herbivores mammals (let's take Cervidae for example).
> So, was it possible that some species of Sauropods prefered ferns,
> others, conifers or maybe some species of conifers?
> In this case, there were ecological niches not only based on size of
> the food, but also on the nature of the food (species of plants.)

I'm not sure; it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion for smaller
dinosaurs, but the average sauropod was so large, I don't know if it
could have really specialized in any particular food item within its
range.  That's not to say it's impossible, though; I just don't think
it's very likely.-*Thescelosaurus*

> Cheers,
>              Luc J. "Aspidel" BAILLY.
>              http://dinosauricon.com/artists/ljb.html
>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: HPB1956@aol.com
>   To: dinosaur@usc.edu
>   Cc: HPB@bdal.de
>   Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 6:46 PM
>   Subject: Re: Morrison Sauropods\etc. (long)
>
>
>   There is quite a diversity of huge (= adult) plant eaters in the
> Morrisson
>   Formation with Apatosaurus, Barosaurus, Brachiosaurus,
> Camarasaurus,
>   Diplodocus and Haplocanthosaurus compared with todays eco-systems.
> Every
>   genus may have filled a different ecological niche to evade direct
> competiton.
>
>   But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There must have been an
> abundance of
>   sauropod babies and juveniles. According to Gregory Paul in
> "Dinosaur Eggs
>   and Babies" a sauropod could have produced between 500 - 4000 eggs
> in a
>   40-year interval.
>
>   For us humans to keep population size stable a woman must have
> about 2.1
>   children on average. If we take , let's say, an average of about
> 1000 eggs
>   per female sauropod for this, this would mean that sauropods
> needed about 500
>   times more offspring to keep their numbers stable.
>
>   This in turn would mean that there was a huge number of juveniles
> (with a
>   very high mortality rate, what a carnage), which contained the
> real genetic
>   variety needed for survival of a species. So the total number of
> adult
>   animals needed for survival may have been very much lower as in
> today's
>   mammals.
>
>   But the problem I see is that juveniles of at least six different
> genera
>   competed for food and shelter. And that with a basically
> identically bauplan.
>   At young age sauropods genera must have been more similarily built
> than later
>   as adults. Additionally there were an overlap in size. This means
> e.g. each
>   genera reaching at some time of their growth food in a height of
> two meters.
>   And this independently of their later adult sizes.
>
>   So the real competition was in the kindergarten including
> theropods bigger
>   than these youngsters.
>
>   Any comments are welcome.
>
>   And now cheers from a sunny Germany (time to go swimming)
>
>
>   Heinz Peter Bredow
>

---------------------------------------------------------------
Justin Tweet, *Thescelosaurus*
See "Thescelosaurus!": http://personal2.stthomas.edu/jstweet/index.htm

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