Re: dinosaurs did eat grass

[Rodlox R <rodlox@hotmail.com>]

> On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:32:55 -0700 Andrew RC Milner
> <andrew@hanmansfossils.com> writes:
> > Jim Kirkland and I just looked over this interesting article tonight
> > and we
> > are curious if anyone has seen Late Cretaceous grass pollen?
>
> A good question.
> Furthermore, modern pollen from Sahara Desert flora are routinely
> collected in pollen traps* throughout the U.S., meaning that pollen can
> not only hop between continents, but it can also hop across oceans.
>
> Modern grass pollen has many diagnostic features.  Cretaceous grass
> pollen should have at *least* a few of those characters as well.

maybe it wasn't windborne at the time.


> So either palynologists have been misidentifying Cretaceous grass pollen
> as another taxon for the last 70 years (that level of consistent
> misidentification would be a feat in itself), or there actually was no
> grass pollen in the Cretaceous.

maybe grass pollen was exceedingly rare because it was hardly ever 
used....if 99% of hte time, grass spread vegetatively, we'd have no pollen 
evidence of it.


just a thought.