Re: gigantism as liability

[Mike Taylor <mike@indexdata.com>]

Michael Habib writes:
 > > The article's authors count gigantism as some sort of
 > > achievement...one that mammals have been unable to attain. I
 > > believe this perspective is flawed, biased (perhaps) by the
 > > infernal anthropomorphic attitude that bigger is better.
 > 
 > It depends on what sort of metric one uses - large size invokes
 > special mechanical constraints, and thus represents a sort of
 > biological "solution" to interesting problems.  At the same time, I
 > agree with your sentiment that "bigger is better" is a subjective
 > tendency that probably clouds some analyses.

It may be subjective, but doesn't mean it's not true.  Bigger is more
awesome, and therefore better.  All right-thinking people will
immediately see the truth of this.

 > P. Martin Sander & Marcus Clauss: Sauropod Gigantism. How did
 > sauropod dinosaurs reach body sizes that remain unsurpassed in
 > land-living animals?, Science 322, 200f. (10 October 2008)

I knew that a Sander-Clauss paper was on the way, but I thought it was
going to be on arctic reindeer populations.

 _/|_    ___________________________________________________________________
/o ) \/  Mike Taylor    <mike@indexdata.com>    http://www.miketaylor.org.uk
)_v__/\  "Troodontids are almost certainly deinonychosaurs.  I was wrong
         about troodontids in 1994, but don't care" -- Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.