Re:

[Sean Carroll <sean@katido.com>]

David Marjanovic wrote:

> From: "Jomana Moss" <eustacia1@mail.com>

> > 1. Dinosaurs were susceptible to viruses, like most warm-blooded animals.

> Aren't there viruses for _everything_? I mean,
> www.at.embnet.org/gem/research/Witte/witte.html leads one to suspect every
> organism can catch a virus?

Probably very true, but as I understand it, endothermic animals are
susceptible to many more different viruses than ectothermic ones. Like
Arnold says in _Jurassic Park_ (the book): 'Ever catch a cold from a zoo
alligator?' ;)

I wonder if the original poster here knows about Robert Bakker's theory
on the K-T extinction (that geographic barriers began to fall, for
example the Bering Strait, and the intermixing faunas all started to
catch new diseases they had no immunity too -- much like rinderpest in
African cattle, brought over from England, or smallpox, brought to the
New World by the European colonists).

Of course, Bakker doesn't say that this 'explains the rapidity of their
demise' -- in fact, he says that the evidence is strong that nonavian
dinosaur populations were in decline (measured by a drop in species
diversity) for a long time before the boundary. But he does (or did)
claim that contagious diseases were the primary direct factor behind the
extinction.

-- 
--Sean
http://www.livejournal.com/users/spclsd223/