Re: Speculative dino species

["Jordan Mallon" <j_mallon@hotmail.com>]

> From: "Srnka, Christopher P." <Srnka.Christopher@mayo.edu>

> I really enjoyed seeing some of Greg Paul's guesses about what dinosaur
> evolution might have produced in the Scientific American Book of 
> >Dinosaurs; just wondering how other feel about this, depicting species 
> >that never existed (but might have, if given the chance) or even 
> >depicting speculative "missing links" ( something of a misnomer, i 
> >know).

Not only do I think the notion is important, but I also think it's 
warranted.  Cladistics allows us to do things like this; predicting the 
features of as-yet-undiscovered animals in the fossil record.  That said, I 
would imagine it to be easier to predict the features of (how should I word 
this?) a basal dinosaur or one that is well embedded in the dinosaurian 
family tree than to guess at the characteristics of these animals 65 million 
years down the line.
Just me ramblin'...

-Jordan Mallon

http://www.geocities.com/paleoportfolio/

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