Re: gigantism as liability

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

> I don't believe turtles are a good comparison because 1) they have a body 
> plan specialized for predator defence; the shell effectively limits 
> predation soon (relative to non-shelled creatures) after hatching, and 2) 
> they live in a vast 3 dimensional medium that affords protection not 
> available to terrestrial animals...

How does it afford protection when there's no place to hide?

> if sauropods relied strictly on numbers it is hard (for me) to
> come up with a scenario whereby babies who are defenseless at chicken 
> size,
> who would have had predators at least all the way up to elephant size, 
> could
> avoid total reproductive failure.

Perhaps by growing fast -- much faster than any turtle.

Also, I think sauropods were well able to put up a fight against any 
predator up to around their own size, considering the thumb claws and the 
tail and all.

What we really need here is a way to quantify all these factors, and that's 
going to be difficult...