Re: Sauropod Survival

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2005 4:39 PM

> In any case, the terrestrial Tr/J extinction event is a weird one. It 
> seems as if many (if not all) the big non-dinosaurian
> archosaurs and non-mammaliaform therapsids were actually extinct by the 
> Norian-Rhaetian boundary, and didn't make it to the Tr/J
> itself. (NOTE: this remains a subject of some debate). So the Tr/J on land 
> may not be as catastrophic as the P/Tr or the K/T.

How easy, actually, is it to _find_ the Norian-Rhaetian boundary outside of 
western/central European marine strata...?

> Regardless, the existence of Triassic sauropods does suggest (as you note)
> that large metabolically active creatures did survive the event.

_If_ we assume that the hatchlings were not cared for, which means they 
didn't need their parents to survive, there could be an easy way around 
this. However, this is hard to imagine -- an animal the length of a computer 
keyboard plus mouse pad that cannot run caring for itself!