Re: New refs (long) cont. (short)

[Ronald Orenstein <ornstn@rogers.com>]

At 10:43 AM 04/02/03 -0600, Tim Williams wrote:
> DinoBoyGraphics@aol.com wrote:
>
> > Surely you aren't referring to the amount of morphological diversity?  It 
> > far exceeds that of dinosaurs.  There are no brachiating dinosaurs, no 
> > cetacean analogs, no sea
> > otter analogs.

The downy young of the hoatzin comes pretty close to a brachiator, as do 
parrots that use their bills as a climbing assist (if you alow the bill to 
be an alternative for the forelimbs).  Giant Cenozoic penguins may very 
well have been small whale analogues; their extinction has been linked to 
the rise of true cetaceans (and the metriorhynchid crocodiles may have been 
analogues for the smaller archaeocete whales).  As for sea otters - well, 
there is really only one species of sea otter; the marine otter of South 
America is not as thoroughly adapted to life at sea, and any number of 
coastal diving seabirds could be considered to be analogous to it.

Not to mention dinos we haven't found yet....


--
Ronald I. Orenstein                           Phone: (905) 820-7886
International Wildlife Coalition              Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116
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Mississauga, Ontario, Canada L5L 3W2          mailto:ornstn@rogers.com