mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Would it taste like gator?This, even with all of its randomness and bluntness, is true.
Mosasaur Sushi will definitely be a menu option.
Would it taste like gator?This, even with all of its randomness and bluntness, is true.
Mosasaur Sushi will definitely be a menu option.
Originally Posted by jacobus
Might humanity have come to revere the sea monsters, and worship them as gods? Would the faithful have left human victims chained at the shore as a sacrifice, like Andromeda was left for Cetus? Or would we execrate them as some kind of demons?
Originally Posted by TMOT1955
I'm not sure they really did become extinct.
Originally Posted by TMOT1955
My personal belief is that The Loch Ness Monster (Nessie) isn't just one individual but is instead a small community or group of individuals. The same with Chessie and Champie supposedly spotted in The Chesapeake Bay and in Lake Champlain.
I think in fairly large but isolated bodies of water like Loch Ness, it may be possible for a small number of such dinosaurs to have adapted and survived and their offspring are still with us a species little changed in say 100 million years.
Originally Posted by Emperor Qianlong
Actually, one of the peculiar features about dinosaurs is that none* of them were aquatic.
Originally Posted by Weaver
The problem is that reptiles are not mammals. Whilst lions and orcas are relatively rare, crocodiles and other predator reptiles are not.
There is a very basic difference between mammalian and reptile predators...reptiles are very numerous. Whilst I have in the past travelled for days in Southern Africa seeing never a lion or any other predator, I would not be game to attempt to swim across any of our estuarine rivers in Northern Australia...there are literally dozens in every stretch of river just waiting for a chance.
Strange to say a modern time traveller would be very likely to be able to dodge the odd T-Rex on land (warm-blood), he would be foolish in the extreme to swim across a stretch of ocean.
This, even with all of its randomness and bluntness, is true.
Mosasaur Sushi will definitely be a menu option.
May I say I'm glad to see another taxonomy geek on the board!Small nitpick, so-called "marine dinosaurs" are NOT DINOSAURS. The great marine reptiles belonged to a completely different reptillian clade. The amniotes (reptiles, mammals, and birds) are usually classified according to temporal fenestration, which is probably the most reliable method of phylogenetic classification. The major amniote classes are anapsids, diapsids, and synapsids. The anapsids include all basal amniotes and the original reptiles. Today, anapsids are represented by testudines (turtles and tortoises). Diapsids include most reptiles and all birds. Synapsids include the mammals and the extinct pelocosaurs (such as dimetrodon) and mammal-like reptiles.
The dinosaurs, as well as birds, pterosaurs, crocodiles, lizards, mososaurs, and snakes are all diapsids. However, plesiosaurs are euryapsids and ichtyosaurs parapsids. The parapsid condition is similar to the euryapsid condition, and parapsid skulls might be a variation of the euryapsid type. Both in turn were derived from the diapsid condition. Parapsid reptiles evolved either from euryapsids (most likey) or independently from sea-going diapsids.
The following link explains it better:
http://tolweb.org/notes/?note_id=463
See also:
http://tolweb.org/Amniota/14990
A cladistic classification of amniotes follows.
ANAPSID
DIAPSID
- testudines (turtles, tortoises)
SYNAPSIDS
- squamates
- lizards, snakes, mososaurs
- tuatras
- archosaurs
- crocodiles
- pterosaurs
- dinosaurs & birds
- marine reptiles
- plesiosaurs (euryapsid)
- ichtyosaurs (parapsid)
There are several key differences between marine reptiles and dinosaurs. Aside from the fact that dinosaurs are archosaurs and are far more closely related to birds than any living or extinct reptile outside of archosauria, it is now understood that dinosaurs, like pterosaurs, were in fact endothermic (warm blooded) like mammals and birds (actually, their metabolism was like birds). The major groups of marine reptiles: euryapsid-derived plesiosaurs and ichtyosaurs, and the snake-like mososaurs were probably all ectothermic (cold blooded). We are reliably certain that mososaurs were cold blooded because mososaurs were squamates who evolved from a lizard-like ancestor. I am not as certain about plesiosaurs and ichtyosaurs, but I think they had a metabolism like that of sharks. [The distinction between ectothermy and endothermy is probably more a matter of degree than of kind. Virtually all animals produce SOME heat in metabolism. Most lifeforms produce very little heat, but endotherms produce a great deal, so much so that they may maintain a constant temperature.] Plesiosaurs and ichtyosaurs probably were able to maintain a warmer body temperature than the surrounding water by virtue of their sheer size and bulk, which would allow them to enter cold waters, but their inability to maintain a high enough body temperature (due to a fundamentally ectothermic metabolism) would keep them from thriving in cold climates. Therefore, the marine reptiles would be confined to sub-tropical seas.
- pelycosaurs (including dimetrodon)
- therapsids
- monotremes
- mammals