Re: As the kids say, *facepalm*... [Scanned]

["Habib, Michael" <MHabib@Chatham.edu>]

That would be preferable, and seems plausible. Unfortunately, I happen to know 
that there is another individual (by the name of David Esker) with a similar 
sort of odd, looney background that has made similar suggestions on the web (in 
his case, that the air was super dense like water).  That makes me think that 
they have rubbed off on one another and that this is not a hoax (Esker has 
previously done the web rounds heckling Mark Witton and myself, among others).

Trying to pull some kind of useful information out of this travesty, we might 
take note that the knee-jerk "X animal must be too big to Y" has plagued 
paleontological inquiry for over a century.  It has been particularly applied 
to Mesozoic vertebrates (dinosaurs and pterosaurs, especially), and while this 
bit of facepalm worthy thinking is thankfully more or less gone from the 
professional paleontological community, it does crop up from time to time among 
those without specialized training.  In short the "general public" is very bad 
at understanding the biological consequences of size, which is something I 
suspect most of us in the professional and advanced amateur community forget.

--Mike H.


On Apr 3, 2012, at 8:57 AM, Mike Taylor wrote:

> It is possible that the Aquatic Dino story start out that way, then
> blew up out of control?
> 
> -- Mike.



Michael Habib
Assistant Professor of Biology
Chatham University
Woodland Road, Pittsburgh PA  15232
Buhl Hall, Room 226A
mhabib@chatham.edu
(443) 280-0181