From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Friesen on elastics and sauropod necks
Date: 5 Oct 92 19:25:29 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit


In article <1992Oct3.085116.24721@smds.com> ishmael!rh writes:
|Baluchatherium, which was a mammal and was in the sauropod
|weight class, was a ruminant.  The evidence is pretty good that sauropods
|had gizzards.

Ah, so another factor allowing larger size shows up.

|Incidentally, what evidence are you talking about for cold-blooded
|sauropods?  I don't have my copy of _Kings of Creation_ at hand but
|it does have a 1992 date and it does go into the controversy.  If my
|recollection serves me correctly, the whole question is very much up
|in the air.  Everybody agrees that they were inertial homeotherms at
|a minimum.  Beyond that it gets pretty murky.

This is based on a *recent* result that I posted just a few weeks ago.

A rather ingenious researcher adapted a technique that has long been used
to estimate ancient ocean temperatures - oxygen isotope ratios in biotically
deposited minerals.

He found he could distinguish endotherms from ectotherms by the distribution
of bone formation temperatures in the body (*not* absolute temparatures).
By using the oxygeb isotope method he was able to determine the temp.
distributation for several dinosaur species for which we have sufficiently
complete skeletons.  As I remember he tested a carnosaur, at least one
ornithopod, and one or two others, including Cetiosaurus, a sauropod from
England.  *All* of, save one, showed a clear endothermic temperature pattern.
The *one* exception was Cetiosaurus.

All that is needed now is for his measurements to be confirmed on other
dinosaurs, and for the pattern he found to continue to be correlated with
metabolism under further analysis, and the case is essentially proven
(or at least as close as one can get to that in science).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com

From root@srv06 Mon Oct  5 05:39:46 1992
From: root@srv06 (Operator)
To: dcc@srv06, ivs@srv06, jhp@srv06, mcb@srv06, rts@srv06, swf@srv06,
        txj@srv06
Subject: WARNING - NSE partition(s) almost full.
Content-Length: 1043
X-Lines: 25
Status: RO

Please garbage collect or delete files where possible.
 
 
Disk usage on srv06:/srv06.nse.id002c
/dev/id002c          1908783 1466284  251620    85%    /srv06.nse.id002c
The following environment(s) are running out of space:
                     Cmg        dbc-r-5.0
                     Nse        dbc-m
                     jhp        cmg-u-systest
                     jhp        dbc-u-5.0test2
                     rts        cmg-f-1.3
                     rts        cmg-f-ntos.2
                     rts        cmg-i
                     rts        cmg-r
                     rts        cmg-r-e
                     rts        cmg-u-e-mkdep
                     rts        cmg-u-nsedbm
                     rts        cmg-u-rts
                     rts        dbc-f-suntools
                     rts        dbc-s-rts
                     swf        cmg-s-tdvcs
                     swf        cmg-u-1.3
                     swf        cmg-u-swf
                     swf        dbc-s-newtest
                     txj        dbc-u-hgtctxj

-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com