Re: Regarding Spinosaurus

["no go" <honkietong@hotmail.com>]

> > Several responses illustrate the interesting difficulties here. In groping 
> > for a big-bodied, warm-blooded, freshwater, obligate fish-eater, the first 
> > thought is to turn to the sea for analogues. But oceans and freshwater 
> > environments are very different places, particularly in terms of 
> > connectivity and continuity of food supply over ecological and 
> > evoultionary timescales. Ditto the point about brown bears - during the 
> > salmon run, fine, but what about at other times? Are freshwaters stable 
> > and/or interconnected enough over suitable timescales to allow the 
> > evolution of big-bodied, warm-blooded, gas-guzzling, 
> > starve-in-a-month-if-things-go-belly-up, obligate fish-eaters? (I take the 
> > point about 'obligate' being extreme - useful for speculation though!)<<

Morphologically speaking, can Spinosaurids be considered better at fishing 
then bears? (if so we will have to skew our observations on bears due to the 
increased efficiency for the dinosaur harvesting fish to compensate for 
this) And what exactly do we know about the ecosystem and the quantity of 
fish in their environment? Can we include the possibility of Spinosaurid 
migration to harvest fish at in different areas seasonally?

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.