RE: Built Like a Race Horse, Slow as an Elephant?

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

> Young to teenage TRexes = VERY FAST.

and nimble. These would have been the guys to fear
most for a human. The larger ones would not have
minded an easy pick, but they were used to bigger
slabs o'meat.

> 1.  TRex was THE 'Apex Predator' - which also
> scavenged
> when carrion was available (do any of y'all pass up
> a
> free meal?);

Definitely seems so. (Come to think of it, it was the
apex scavenger too of course.)

> 2.  Dinosaur diversity was at its HEIGHT just before
> the K-T boundary (samples from ONE teeny tiny site
> known as 'Hell Creek' notwithstanding - the
> exception
> that proves the rule)

The point is more the changing definitions of
"dinosaur" than anything else. Yes many lineages had
disappeared or were declining after 100 MA. On the
other hand, theropods simply exploded onto the stage
iun the Cretaceous really.

As is to be expected. The dinos at large had been
shaping the entire Mesozoic ecosystem around them on
the meso and macro levels at least for all the time.
The Cretaceous 

> 3.  The asteroid that hit Yucatan

at least with its largest piece

> killed off the
> dinosaurs;

save some peculiar ones in ???W Asia???

>  we're d*mned lucky ANYTHING survived at
> all
> other than insects.

Arthropods probably. And some terrestrial greenery,
and some minor critters, as far as life on land goes.

In fact, if this had happened, I'd guess the result as
soon as life had managed to bounce back would have
been something not unlike the Carboniferous, at least
terrestrially - essentially a plant/arthropod world as
soon as atmospheric composition had shifted back to at
least as high an oxygen content as today (which was
very quickly it seems). The caveat is that vertebrate
survival would have been far more likely than not as
regards aquatic forms. There are, after all, permanent
vertebrate gene pools in the deep sea which are
relatively unfazed by what happens above, as long as
the snow falls plentiful and isn't toxic.

An interesting speculation would be whether the
increased amount of oxygen deviated via a plentiful
"fish" fauna would preclude atmospheric oxygen levels
rising to where they were in the Carboniferous.


Regards,


Eike




        
                
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