slow lane my foot(prints)

[GSP1954@aol.com]

The latest Natl Geo article has it disappointments. Among them Claussen's 
assertion that sauropods were "pretty much cold-blooded" (an obsolete term) 
and lived in the "slow lane". The slow lane comment has been made before and 
refuted, and is nonscientific because it is definitively falsified by 
trackways which show that sauropods walked in the same long stride fast speed 
lane (3-5 km/h) normally walked in by elephants, rhinos, other mammals and 
birds, and much faster than the true slow lane (0.1-2 km/h) walked in by 
reptiles of all sizes. I've published on this repeatedly so there is no 
excuse for not understanding that only tachyaerobic animals can sustain such 
high walking speeds on a normal basis. It is also now known that sauropods 
grew as fast as elephants and even whales, which is possible only in highly 
energetic species under natural conditions. Yet people keep trying to force 
fast moving, fast growing, supertall sauropods into the energy efficiency 
world of bradyaerobic reptiles. As for the nonsense about sauropod hearts 
being too big and inefficient if they held their necks high, Claussen should 
be a small brained reptile since his combination of a fast metabolism and a 
bloated, energy draining brain makes him a dozen times less efficient than an 
ora. Likewise flying birds do not exist since they are super inefficient 
because of their high metabolic rates and massive flight muscles (which boost 
resting metabolism by a further quarter or more) make them uberinefficient. 
Rather shocking but not surprising to see arguments that have no basis in 
fact or science still being regularly promoted to the public. Looks like a 
long time before dinosaur science becomes a science. 

G Paul