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Dino Guy Ralph | 1 Sep 2006 01:52
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RE: Sapeornis and other Mesozoic Birds

Oops!  (A typical follow-up my every post requires, it seems).

I meant to ask if _Sapeornis_ was the largest known Early Cretaceous bird,
not the largest known Early Mesozoic bird.  Sorry about that!  

Of course, if flightless dromaeosaurs are birds, then _Utahraptor_ would be
in the running for really big Mesozoic birds.  But I was aiming for a less
inclusive definition of birds for the sake of easy museum visitor
comprehension, whether or not such a group should ultimately turn out to be
a valid clade.  The 10th _Archaeopteryx_ and the southern hemisphere
maniraptora are certainly shaking up the family tree.  It's enough to upset
traditional Arbor Day celebrations. 

I find it amusing that Chiappe writes in _Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs_:
"_Aves_ (birds) may be defined as _Archaeopteryx_ plus extinct birds and all
descendants of their most recent common ancestor (AVIALAE of Gauthier
1996)."  But wait -- how do we know what animals are "extinct birds"?  We
MAY define _Aves_ (birds) as above, but would that really be such a good
idea? 

Confused and loving it,
----Ralph

Dino Guy Ralph
Docent at the California Academy of Sciences
Dinosaur and Fossil Education
Member of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-DINOSAUR <at> usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR <at> usc.edu] On Behalf Of T.
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Scott | 1 Sep 2006 02:47
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Re: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

Careful! We older primates don't want to think about the scales in our
bodies...
Scott Perry
High Mountain Writers' House
Irasburg, Vermont
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "K and T Dykes" <ktdykes <at> arcor.de>
To: <david.marjanovic <at> gmx.at>
Cc: <dinosaur <at> usc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 5:41 PM
Subject: Re: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

>
> And I'm willing to bet you have none of that sauropsoidan characteristic
of
> keratin-beta involved in any scales on your body.
>
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don ohmes | 1 Sep 2006 02:52
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Fw: cause of death at KT

See below--
Don
----- Original Message ----
From: Scott <hmwh <at> together.net>
To: DINOSAUR <at> usc.edu
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 10:31:43 AM
Subject: cause of death at KT

Franklin Bliss wrote
"Disruption of the food chain, disease, climate change, fires, habitat
disruption, acid rain, competition for limited resources and other  causes
all had an effect on the overall extinction process at the K/ T. "

I'd say, for North America at least, don't forget the blast wave of the
impact as cause of death factor.

If the boys from Arizona (Marcus, Melosh, and Collins) are right in their
algorithm for computing effects of an impact, then even at 1500 kilometers
away from the site the blast wave is still traveling at 164 m/s (366 mph),
given an impact angle of 45 degrees, an impacting object density of 3000
kg/m cubed and an impact velocity of 32 km/sec (about 20 miles/s). I don't
know when the curvature of the earth sends this blast wave off overhead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There's a couple of web pages on this (search on Steven Sque), or you can drag Pythagoras out of the closet--

Assuming the Earth is a sphere, a man sitting on the ground could see only the tip of a tower ~174km tall at a
linear distance of 1500km. In other words, given a line tangent to an earth-sized sphere, a point 1500km
from the point of intersection has an altitude of ~174km. This implies that there would be considerable
blast wave divergence from the surface of the Earth at that distance. All in all, though, things might be
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Roberto Takata | 1 Sep 2006 03:16
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How do you sort your bibliographical references?

I was wondering if it could be useful to offer a wiki-based online
service (for free) to people organize their scientific references -
they could publish a page with their notes on an article ou groups of
articles and link it to the online article and other pages, they could
organize their comments in groups and topics, and have a search engine
to find it if they forget where they put them. If they want, those
comments and notes could be shared with other people or simply be made
secret (protected by password).

What do you think? Is it just a wheel reinvention or could be a helpful service?

[]s,

Roberto Takata
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Dann Pigdon | 1 Sep 2006 04:15
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Re: Sapeornis and other Mesozoic Birds

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. writes: 

>> Ralph Miller wrote:
>> The Mesozoic bird with the best press agent?
> 
> Nope, that's Archaeopteryx.

Or Velociraptor, depending on who you ask. 

___________________________________________________________________ 

Dann Pigdon
GIS / Archaeologist         http://heretichides.soffiles.com
Melbourne, Australia        http://www.geocities.com/dannsdinosaurs
___________________________________________________________________
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John Scanlon | 1 Sep 2006 06:14
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RE: Ancient raptors likely feasted on early humans

Tommy, maybe you forgot the New Guinea Harpy Eagle, Harpyopsis novaeguineae

(see e.g. http://www.baldeagleinfo.com/eagle/eagle6.html for an overview; I
don't know if 'Buteonine or Harpy eagles' are considered a clade, and I'm
surprised they ever were assumed to form a natural group, considering their
fragmented distribution)

There used to be one of these in an aviary at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, in the
mid-70's when I used to spend a lot of time there (I'd walk a few miles to
get there nearly every weekend in 1976, often Saturday and Sunday), and I
always stopped in to spend a few minutes or more with this spectacular and
vocal but rather lonely bird.

Of course New Guinea has no monkeys, but plenty of arboreal possums and tree
kangaroos which are more or less ecological equivalents (and probably taste
similar).  If Harpyopsis is really part of the same radiation as 'Harpies'
in the Philippines and Africa, there must have been similar species right
across southern Asia not too long ago.  They seem to need really big patches
of forest; it'd be worth looking for those fossils in Borneo and Sumatra.

John

-----------------------------------------------
Dr John D. Scanlon
Palaeontologist, 
Riversleigh Fossil Centre, Outback at Isa
19 Marian Street / PO Box 1094
Mount Isa  QLD  4825
AUSTRALIA
Ph:   07 4749 1555
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Roberto Takata | 1 Sep 2006 06:36
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Re: Ancient raptors likely feasted on early humans

On 9/1/06, John Scanlon <riversleigh <at> outbackatisa.com.au> wrote:
> Tommy, maybe you forgot the New Guinea Harpy Eagle, Harpyopsis novaeguineae

It must be an avenge:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6874

[]s,

Roberto Takata
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Mickey Rowe | 1 Sep 2006 09:01
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Dinosaur List Administrative Message

This file was last touched April 4, 2006

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Rather than sending the whole long administrative message each month
I'm going to give you only the table of contents and the two sections
that I expect to be the most popular.  If you wish to see the entire
document you can visit it at any time at:
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K and T Dykes | 1 Sep 2006 11:49
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Re: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

Hi Jason,

<<In both cases, I feel it is a false comparison. Calling a bird a dinosaur
is a completely different thing from calling a bat a mammal. It is more akin
to calling a mammal a therapsid, or a snake a lizard.>>

Sorry to be late.  I'm a mammal and a therapsid, but I'm not a snake or a
lizard.  This is the fault of my ancestors, so blame them.

<<Theoretically the term non-mammalian therapsid, or on-ophidian
lacertillian might also crop up now and again, but I've yet to see it
(admittedly the lacertillian one doesn't show up mostly due to the weirdness
of lacertillian phylogeny).>>

I see the term 'non-mammalian therapsid' sometimes.  It occurs in papers on
the evolutionary history of therapsids (including mammals).  For example:
Maisch MW, Matzke AT & Sun G (2004), A new tritylodontid from the Upper
Jurassic Shishugou Formation of the Junggar Basin, (Xinjiang, NW China),
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 24(3), p.649-656.

"ABSTRACT-A new tritylodontid cynodont, /Bienotheroides ultimus/ sp. nov.,
is described from the Upper Jurassic Shishugou Formation of Jiangjunmiao in
the northeastern Junggar Basin of Xinjiang (NW China). The type consists of
a partial skeleton, including teeth, a partial skull, and a considerable
portion of the postcranium. It is identifiable as /Bienotheroides/ because
of the structure of the upper molars and the characteristically deep
zygomatic arch. It is distinguished from /Bienotheroides zigongensis/ from
the Middle Jurassic of the Junggar Basin particularly by characters of the
forelimb, including a humerus that shows little torsion of the proximal and
distal ends. /Bienotheroides ultimus/ is the last of the Chinese
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Hector Rivera Sylva | 1 Sep 2006 11:49
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Alamosaurus description request

Hello everyone:

  Does anyone have in pdf format the description of the Alamosaurus by
Gilmore?

  Gilmore, C.W. 1922. A new sauropod dinosaur from the Ojo Alamo Formation
of New Mexico. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections. 72(14): 1-9.

  I will realy appreciate it.

  Thanks

  Yours

  Hector 

 		
---------------------------------
  Do You Yahoo!? La mejor conexión a Internet y 2GB extra a tu correo por
$100 al mes. http://net.yahoo.com.mx
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Gmane