From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Sauropods: Swimmers or Stompers?   Source Suggestions Solicited.
Date: 11 Apr 92 05:16:40 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <csqj!b_@lynx.unm.edu), rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires) writes:
) Some time ago, before he rode off into the sunset reading War and Peace
) (I never did like Tolstoy; Solzhenitsyn is better, IMO) Mr. Holden had a post
) concerning how sauropods who were once considered to be water dwellers
) are now considered to be terrestrial beings.  I thought this was interesting
) and have tried to do some reading (superficial, alas) on the subject.
 
) Now, my copy of _Dinosaurs of the Southwest_ by Ratkevich, published in
) 1976, in discussing Sauropoda, says:
) 	Once thought to have been the largest of the land vertebrates,
) 	species of sauropods like Brachiosaurus,...are now considered to
) 	have been completely, or almost completely, water animals.
) 	Their tremendous weights...would surely have damaged vital body
) 	structures had they ventured onto dry land for very long.
) A nice full-page picture of a sauropod paddling merrily along follows.
 
) I have also been looking at _Dinosaur Tracks_, by Thulborn, 1990.
) On page 172 of this book, the author mentions tracks found by a researcher
) named Bird ('40s) who interpreted tracks he had found as being those of a
) swimming sauropod, and again a floating sauropod is shown.  Mr. Thulborn
) does not mention anything about how controversial this proposal of Bird is,
) and indeed gives a reference to a paper by Ishigaki.  It looks like Mr. 
) Thulborn is much more concerned in this book with methodology than
) interpretation.
 
) So I looked up Ishigaki's paper in _Dinosaur Tracks and Traces_,
) 1989, _Footprints of Swimming Sauropods from Morocco_, where he says
) in the abstract that "This supports R. T. Bird's theory of sauropod
) swimming ability."  And here I thought "Wow!  This blows Mr. Holden out of
) the water (as it were)!  If the dinosaur is swimming you don't need
) the felt effect of gravity."

I still have one or two evenings a week for usenet;  I simply  don't have time
for reading pure bs, e.g. papers concerning ice cores, varves etc.

Your book is dated, the ideas in it long since disproved, other than for the
rather obvious fact that sauropods could not, as your book stated, live
on land TODAY IN OUR WORLD, GRAVITY BEING WHAT IT IS NOW.  That much ofwhat you read is indeed correct.  

Adrien Desmond's "Hot Blooded Dinosaurs" is the real book you need, and 
does a pretty thorough job of destroying the notion of sauropods as water
dwellers.  The idea of using their long necks as snorkels while keeping much of
their bodies submerged doesn't work for reasons Desmond gives.  There is the
fact that they'd need huge flag feet like a duck (which they didn't have) to
keep from miring helplessly in muddy river bottoms.  There is the fact that
their teeth show the kinds of wear and tear you get from high leaf grazing
(and not from eating water vegitation).  There are footprints in Texas clearly
showing them walking and even running on land.  And there is the further
(and obvious) consideration that water deep enough to support sauropods would
also support big sharks...  lots and lots of them.  They (the sauropods) 
wouldn't do too well.

Ratkevich is correct, however in noting that these creatures could not live
on land either.

) However...I was smart to scan read all the other papers in this same collection
) because Lockley and Conrad, in _The Paleoenvironmental context,
) Preservation and Paleoecological significance of dinosaur tracksites
) in the Western USA_, discusses Ishigaki's interpretation, says that it
) is probably wrong, and that
) 	If Ishigaki and Bird are correct, vertebrate ichnologists
) 	will in effect be reviving the "aquatic sauropod" hypothesis.
) 	Our interpretation is more in line with the terrestial
) 	sauropod scenario.

So you have finally noticed the same dilemma I've been talking about all
this time.

) So, what's my point?  Well, the flip-flopping on theories does not bother me
) (in fact it is a positive sign), but I am interested in tracing a little
) more the complete turn-around from the late seventies to today on this
) swimming sauropod silliness.  If the sage saurological superluminaries out there
) could bestow some more references where I could look at how the change
) in outlook came about, and indeed on current models of Sauropods, and 
) like subjects, I would be very appreciative.  Books are rarer than 
) dinosaur eggs in this library, so 'zine suggestions would be good too.

There you have it.  No happy answers.  The one notion obviously doesn't
work, and the other obviously doesn't work either.  The only thing which
does work is to understand that these creatures lived on land and, yet,
did not experience gravity as we do.  The solar system was different,
the world was different, and the entire nature of reality as experienced
by earthbound creatures was different.

Again, books worth reading include Desmond's book, McGowen's "Dinosaurs,
Sea Dragons, and Spitfires", and Talbott's "Saturn Myth".  The last book
explains the nature of the antediluvian solar system to some extent.

Ted HOlden
HTE



Ted Holden
HTE



-- 
HTE
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