RE: Elephants and hyenas

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

On Mon, Apr 8th, 2013 at 4:39 AM, john-schneiderman@cox.net wrote:

> I think that the ways of birds and crocodylia are our best models for 
> parental care and/or defense of the young within the dinosauria. 
> Dinosaurs were not mammals and mammal behaviour shouldn't be used as a 
> guide to what we consider dinosaur behaviour. Tempting as it is.

Then again, birds and crocs are highly specialised archosaurs. We can't assume 
that non-avian 
dinosaurs behaved any more like modern archosaurs than they did modern mammals. 

Using modern archosaurs as non-avian dinosaur behavioural analogues is like 
trying to reconstruct 
behavioural patterns of elephants by only looking at those of bats and seals.

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Dann Pigdon
Spatial Data Analyst               Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia               http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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