Re: Speculative dino species

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "aspidel" <aspidel@infonie.be>
To: "Daniel Bensen" <dbensen@gotnet.net>
Cc: "The Dinosaur Mailing List" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: Speculative dino species


> [...]
> I also imagine hypsilophodonts [...]
> evolving into little species which live under the snow like some mice in
> North Canada, and dromaeosaurs jumping to break the snow and catching
them,
> a bit like arctic foxes.

This requires all mammals dying out -- in the real world there were
multituberculates, plesiadapiforms, rodents + relatives and gondwanatheres
_among_ the gnawing mammals of the Paleocene. If we assume the explosive
radiation of placentals didn't take place we have to find a compelling
reason for killing of the multis...

What exactly do we assume? That the K-T event, for whatever reasons, was
half as bad (say, the meteorite half as big)? If we give it its real
proportions we are very limited in speculation.