Re: Speculative dino species

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

> If pterosaurs survived, I could see them retaining the giant air bird
> niche -- replacing condors and vultures, for example.

Rather albatrosses.

> What were the
> largest flying birds known from the Cretaceous?

IIRC *Enantiornis* and *Gurilynia*, vulture-size.

> What about large aquatic birds? Would they have had any advantages
> over the marine reptiles?
>
> -- Jeff Hecht

Why advantages? IMHO they would have stayed where they were --
hesperornithiforms instead of seals and penguins at least in the Northern
Hemisphere, maybe loons instead in the South (remember LK Antarctic
*Polarornis*), ichthyornithids instead of seagulls, and so on. And
shorebirds just where they are now and were in the LK. What about surviving
presbyornithids, especially if we drop the Eocene-Oligocene extinction?

What about filter-feeding sharks rather than pliosaurs (like the actual
whale shark etc.)?

Keeping *Xiphactinus* & Co. sounds like a good idea.

If Indian dinos survive, they reach Asia in the Eocene... along with maybe
monotremes and gondwanatheres*? Great Laurasian radiation of noasaurids?

Keep sauropods in NA -- or make sure *Alamosaurus* dies soon enough.

*which, alas, are still known by "the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing
but the tooth".

*********************************
I saw Jack Horner in the TV news yesterday evening, talking about the new
gigantic *Torosaurus* skull. This was the first dinosaur-related news item
since the discovery of *Unenlagia* in 1997.