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RE: Killer Pterosaurs?



From: Dinosaur World <dinoworld@msn.com>
Reply-To: dinoworld@msn.com
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Subject: Killer Pterosaurs?
Date: Sat, 09 Jul 2005 00:39:22 +0000

Hi everyone.
I?m doing some advanced work for a video project and would like your opinions on the following. 

I hope to be a help.

If I proposed a theory that Pterosaurs were a carrier of, and had immunity to, a disease that was fatal to dinosaurs, and this disease played a partial role in the extinction of dinosaurs in the Late Cretaceous. 

um.

Could you please give me your opinions as to the plausibility of such an idea? And if you find it implausible, could you please tell me why. 

sure thing.

how can it be such a broad-spectrum disease? (or is it a family of related diseases?).

one might imagine a genus of diseases that wipes out all the Allosaurids, or all the Sauropods.......but not all of the Therapods, Sauropods, Dryosaurs, etc. (or even to simply weaken that vast array).


on the other hand, I can well believe that the pterosaurs might carry diseases that wipe out the keystone species (or the most popular prey species)...thus tumbling the food chain down in that way.

I realize that fossilized evidence of disease is rare, and so there may not be much evidence for support or nonsupport of such a theory, but I was hoping you could give me your personal opinions on this.

Thanks. 

welcome.

George