Re: Sauropods in wet versus dry environments... a tip of the hat to some past artists (Was Re. Lost Worlds)

["Ray Stanford" <dinotracker@earthlink.net>]

    Rob Gay said to me in his recent posting to the list, "Either
extrapolate paleobiology for the whole ichnofauna based on the substrate,
or...do something else..."

    Sounds inexplicably agitated, doesn't he?  Strange.  My words were
intended to be just a short comment to the list, not a broad treatise on the
paleobiology.

    Could Gay's remark be just the kind of personal put-down I referred to
in my previous post?  Is it a put-down of the ego-boosting kind?  I ask
that, but prefer each answer that for oneself.  It might not have been so
bad if he had not added the nasty, "...or do something else".

    I could comment on some, to me, very in-error things I've seen on Rob's
web site, but...  :)

    Rob risks appearing foolish by his snide comments to me, betraying the
fact that he did not objectively read my first post on this subject.  I
never, ever, claimed that sauropods could not have lived in some other type
of environs, but just made it clear that I didn't think they could live long
in a very dry environment, and inferred, that they seemed to flourish in the
kind of environments in which their tracks are found -- contrary to some
intervening trends in paleo art.

    Also, of course, I know that theropod tracks are often found with
sauropod tracks, but the thing to keep in mind is that while theropod tracks
are found abundantly in some seemingly very dry environments, I am unaware
of any sauropod tracks from such environments.  One might wonder if Rob can
barf up a few of the exceptions one might figure he has ingested, judging
from his comments.  I would welcome them.

    Rob seemingly does not understand that I wouldn't have mentioned the
possibly of preservational bias if I felt absolutely that sauropods did not
live elsewhere. This is another case of creating a straw man, pretending to
'slay' it, and claiming to have won.

    Perhaps Rob has been hanging around an SVP meeting with a vociferous and
well-known gossip who has long tried to put me down and who has never asked
to come here (although he is now relatively nearby) to check out my finds
and my work in organizing them. If so, perhaps one can excuse Rob's reaction
to my posting as his being young and impressionable. Before one suggists
that I "do something else", shouldn't one at least talk to the numerous
professionals (including Martin Lockley) who, unlike the guy I mention, have
bothered to come here and objectively examine my work with tracks.  If Rob
wants the has-visited-and-complimented-me list sent to him privately, it's
his for the asking.  I could even jpeg for him some of the comments they
have freely writtten to me in the fronts of their deservedly esteemed books.

    In closing I ask, "...do something else", huh?!.  When Rob has the kind
of track record (pun intended) that I have, in finding numerous varieties of
tracks and some marvellous trackways where no one had previously found any
(in the Early Cretaceous of Maryland), I might regard his right to tell me
to quit, but only because by that time (I'm 63 now.), I might be ready to
retire from such activity.  :-}

    Three cheers for water basking sauropods.  I just cannot presently
conceive of them as 'desert rats'.

    Ray Stanford