Re: Triassic protofeathers and fake-heads

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

    It seems to me that there is a clear trend among land vertebrates.  
Amphibians have pretty primitive brains and are pretty slow except for their 
tongues.  Reptiles were more advanced in many ways, but it wasn't until the 
Mesozoic that the endothermy thing really kicked in.  Had some pretty brainy 
and fast dinosaurs, but that unfortunately didn't help them survive the K-T 
extinction.  Birds and mammals with their endothermy had a running start 
when the Cenozoic began, but they certainly weren't as brainy and 
coordinated in the Paleocene or Eocene as are modern carnivores or their 
fast-running prey.  So I guess I would have to say that I do believe there 
is a trend toward increasing speed and intelligence in the history of 
predators and their prey.
    The struggle for survival is a stress that inherently results in 
improvements (I'm trying to avoid the word "progress").  Not too many 
decades ago, even Olympic ice skaters were just doing double jumps.  Now the 
women *must* do triples and the men must do *quads* to compete.
            ------ Ken
*****************************************
> From: "Patrick Norton" <ptnorton@msn.com>
> To: "kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>, "dinosaur_1" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Subject: Re: Triassic protofeathers and fake-heads
> Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 19:52:10 -0500
>
> >Just as early Tertiary mammals were slower (physically and mentally) than 
> modern mammals, the early dinosaurs were probably relatively clumsy and 
> dim-witted.<
>
> Even if you could establish the former, the latter doesn't necessarily 
> follow unless you believe in some inherent direction in evolution towards 
> faster, more coordinated (?) and smarter creatures.
>
> PTN



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