Stupid "Theories"

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

Greetings,

Keeping this within the realm of the naturalistic (rather than the
supernatural), one of the most truly bizarre hypotheses I've heard is the
snorkling dinosaur hypothesis.  Although most of us with a a "3" or higher
in the first digit of our age can remember the days when sauropods were
thought to be snorklers, there was a German writer (whose name I
unfortunately cannot recall, and I don't have a copy of his book) who came
up with the idea that ALL dinosaurs were aquatic!  (After all, they are
found in sedimentary rocks deposited in water, right?)

So theropods and low-built ornithischians were shore dwellwers, but bipedal
ornithischians and sauropodomorphs were all submerged up to their nostrils.
The crest of the lambeosaurines served as an anchor for a long fleshy
snorkle.  Dinosaurs experienced a "depth zonation", where different taxa
lived at different depths offshore (e.g., in the Morrison one would move
from a Stegosaurus zone to Camptosaurus to Camarasaurus to Diplodocus to
Brachiosaurus...).

If anyone can recall the author's name, I'd be much obliged.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796