notes

NOTES AND REFERENCES

This section presents a chapter-by-chapter listing of notes and references. Throughout I have included both scientific references and more popular references that might be more approachable for a lay reader.

CHAPTER 1. TREASURE ISLAND

NOTE

1. Suzuki 1997:20.

REFERENCES

Bakker, R. T. 1968. The superiority of dinosaurs. Discovery 3:11–12.

———. 1971. The ecology of brontosaurs. Nature 229:172–174.

———. 1986. The Dinosaur Heresies. New York: Morrow.

Capra, F. 1996. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York: Anchor.

Chiappe, L. M., and Witmer, L. M. (eds.). 2002. Mesozoic Birds: Above the Heads of Dinosaurs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Hay, W. W., DeConto, R. M., Wold, C. N., Willson, K. M., Voigt, S., Schulz, M., Wold-Rossby, A., Dullo, W.-C., Ronov, A. B., Balukhovsky, A. N., and Söding, E. 1999. An alternative global Cretaceous paleogeography. In E. Berrera and C. Johnson (eds.), Evolution of Cretaceous Ocean/Climate Systems. Geological Society of America Special Paper, 332:1–48.

Krause, D. W., O’Connor, P. M., Curry Rogers, K., Sampson, S. D., Buckley, G. A., and Rogers, R. R. 2006. Late Cretaceous terrestrial vertebrates from Madagascar: Implications for Latin American biogeography. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93:178–208.

Kuhn, T. S. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ostrom, J. H. 1969. Osteology of Deinonychus antirrhopus, an unusual theropod from the Lower Cretaceous of Montana. Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History 30:1–165.

———. 1975. The origin of birds. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science 3:55–77.

Sampson, S. D., and Krause, D. W. (eds.). 2007. Majungatholus atopus (Theropoda: Abelisauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 8.

Sampson, S. D., Witmer, L. M., Forster, C. A., Krause, D. W., O’Connor, P. M., Dodson, P., and Ravoavy, F. 1998. Predatory dinosaur remains from Madagascar: Implications for the Cretaceous biogeography of Gondwana. Science 280:1048–1051.

Suzuki, D. 1997. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature. Vancouver: Greystone Books.

Waldrop, M. M. 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster.

CHAPTER 2. STARDUST SAURIANS

NOTES

1. Abram 1996:185.

2. Instead of the term protist, the more inclusive term protoctists is often applied to microsized protists and their macrosized cousins, including seaweed.

3. The Mesozoic is often called the “Age of Dinosaurs.” The preceding Paleozoic era has been referred to as the “Age of Fishes,” and the following era, the Cenozoic, has been dubbed the “Age of Mammals.” Masked behind these designations are deep, long-held biases regarding the place of humans within nature. Specifically, the history of life on Earth has generally been viewed as a ladder of progression, or “scalae naturae,” that begins with microbes and culminates in humankind. Yet, as argued by microbiologist Lynn Margulis and others, it is far more appropriate to regard the entire history of the Earth since the appearance of the first single-celled organisms as the “Age of Bacteria.” Bacteria were the first forms of life and the only life-forms throughout most of geologic history. Today they remain dominant in terms of numbers of individuals and ecosystem importance. Moreover, as described in this chapter, bacteria gave rise to all succeeding kingdoms of life through key bacterial mergers, a symbiotic legacy that remains with us to the present day.

4. This quotation comes from Wilson 1999:107.

REFERENCES

Abram, D. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage Books.

Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: Murray.

Gould, S. J. 1987. Time’s Arrow Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Margulis, L., and Sagan, D. 1986. Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Swimme, B., and Berry, T. 1992. The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era: A Celebration of the Unfolding of the Cosmos. San Francisco: Harper.

Wilson, E. O. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Knopf.

CHAPTER 3. DRAMATIS DINOSAURAE

NOTES

1. Several of the terms in the Linnaean hierarchy (e.g., phylum, order, and family) have recently fallen out of vogue. Biologists embracing the methodology known as phylogenetic systematics, or cladistics—used to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of species and groups—have found it difficult to use such terms consistently across distantly related groups. As a result, an entirely new nomenclature is currently under discussion.

2. The advent of cladistics has led to another terminological revolution of sorts, at least as applied to categorizations of the natural world. Since birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs, and dinosaurs are reptiles, then, in a very real sense birds are reptiles as well, a conclusion that seems counterintuitive. In an effort to reduce such ambiguities, biologists have invented a plethora of new terms relatively unknown outside the academic realm. Thus, the term reptile appears less and less in the scientific literature, replaced by sauropsid, regarded as the natural grouping, or clade, that includes lizards, turtles, crocodiles, and birds, as well as a number of extinct groups such as dinosaurs and pterosaurs. In this sense, birds are avian sauropsids descended from dinosaurs, which in turn belong to the larger sauropsid group known as archosaurs.

REFERENCES

Benton, M. J. 2005. Vertebrate Paleontology. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Raup, D. M., and Stanley, S. M. 1978. Principles of Paleontology. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Freeman.

Reisz, R. R., Scott, D., Sues, H.-D., Evans, D. C., and Raath M. A. 2005. Embryos of an Early Jurassic prosauropod dinosaur and their evolutionary significance. Science 309(5735):761–764.

Sampson, S. D., Carrano, M. T., and Forster, C. A. 2001. A bizarre predatory dinosaur from Madagascar: Implications for the evolution of Gondwanan theropods. Nature 409:504–505.

Wang, S. C., and Dodson, P. 2006. Estimating the diversity of dinosaurs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 103(37):13601–13605.

Weishampel, D., Dodson, P., and Osmólska, H. (eds.). 2004. The Dinosauria. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Zimmer, C. 1999. At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs, and How Life Came Ashore but Then Went Back to Sea. New York: Simon and Schuster.

CHAPTER 4. DRIFTING CONTINENTS AND GLOBE-TROTTING DINOSAURS

NOTES

1. For more on the topic of Alfred Wegener and his ideas on mobile continents, see Eldredge 1998.

2. The melting of polar ice and consequent elevation in sea levels is one of the primary concerns over the current global warming trend, since the majority of people on Earth live in low-lying coastal regions. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the current rise in sea level could lead to the flooding of entire countries such as the Netherlands.

REFERENCES

Eldredge, N. 1998. The Pattern of Evolution. New York: Freeman.

Kump, L. R., Kasting, J. F., and Crane, R. G. 2004. The Earth System. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Sereno, P. C., Wilson, J. A., and Conrad, J. L. 2004. New dinosaurs link southern landmasses in the mid-Cretaceous. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences 271:1325–1330.

Suzuki, D., and McConnell, A. 1997. The Sacred Balance. Vancouver: Greystone Books.

Tatsumi, Y. 2005. The subduction factory: How it operates in the evolving Earth. GSA Today 15(7):4–10.

CHAPTER 5. SOLAR EATING

NOTES

1. A tiny fraction of life on Earth exists entirely off the solar grid, obtaining energy from deep sea hydrothermal vents, which channel energy from within the planet.

2. Humans have become extremely adept at exploiting the solar energy stored in these “fossil fuels.” These ancient remains—in actuality, the energy of the sun stored in solid form—drive our economies and act as another pathway that returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. It is often stated incorrectly that fossil fuels are made from the remains of dinosaurs. Natural resources such as coal, oil, and natural gas are indeed based on the remains of dead organisms, some of which lived alongside dinosaurs. But the great bulk of these stored reserves are derived from plants and microbes, which together make up the bulk of the biomass in any land habitat.

REFERENCES

Callenbach, E. 1998. Ecology: A Pocket Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Erickson, G. M. 1999. Breathing life into Tyrannosaurus rex. Scientific American 281:43–49.

Farlow, J. O., and Holtz Jr., T. R. 2002. The fossil record of predation in dinosaurs. Pp. 251–265 in M. Kowalewski and P. H. Kelley (eds.), The Fossil Record of Predation. Paleontological Society Paper 8. N.p.: Paleontological Society.

Hoagland, M., and Dodson, B. 1998. The Way Life Works. New York: Times Books.

Horner, J. R. 1994. Steak knives, beady eyes, and tiny little arms (a portrait of T. rex as a scavenger). Pp. 157–164 in G. D. Rosenberg and D. L. Wolberg (eds.), Dino Fest. Paleontological Society Special Publication. Knoxville, TN: Paleontological Society.

Johnson, K. R. 2002. The megaflora of the Hell Creek and lower Fort Union Formations in the western Dakotas: Vegetational response to climate change, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event, and rapid marine transgression. Pp. 329–392 in J. Hartman, K. R. Johnson, and D. J. Nichols (eds.), The Hell Creek Formation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Northern Great Plains: An Integrated Continental Record of the End of the Cretaceous. Geological Society of America Special Paper 361. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America

Labandeira, C. C. 1997. Insect mouthparts: Ascertaining the paleobiology of insect feeding strategies. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 28:317–351.

Labandeira, C. C., Johnson, K. R., and Lang, P. 2002. Preliminary assessment of insect herbivory across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary: Major extinction and minimum rebound. Pp. 297–328 in J. H. Hartman, K. R. Johnson, and D. J. Nichols (eds.), The Hell Creek Formation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Northern Great Plains: An Integrated Continental Record of the End of the Cretaceous. Geological Society of America Special Paper 361. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America.

Russell, D. A., and Manabe, M. 2002. Synopsis of the Hell Creek (uppermost Cretaceous) dinosaur assemblage. Pp. 169–176 in J. H. Hartman, K. R. Johnson, and D. J. Nichols (eds.), The Hell Creek Formation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Northern Great Plains: An Integrated Continental Record of the End of the Cretaceous. Geological Society of America Special Paper 361. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America.

Ruxton, G. D., and Houston, D. C. 2003. Could Tyrannosaurus rex have been a scavenger rather than a predator? An energetics approach. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences 270(1576):731–733.

———. 2004. Obligate vertebrate scavengers must be large soaring fliers. Journal of Theoretical Biology 228(3):431–436.

Wing, S. L., and Tiffney, B. H. 1987. The reciprocal interaction of angiosperm evolution and tetrapod herbivory. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology 50:179–210.

CHAPTER 6. THE RIVER OF LIFE

NOTES

1. In 2004, a remarkable Chinese theropod named Mei long was described by Xu Xing and Mark Norell. This duck-sized animal was found with its head tucked in birdlike fashion beneath its forelimb, apparently buried while sleeping.

2. The profound similarities in general structure among vertebrates explain why many paleontologists (including myself for several years) teach anatomy in medical and veterinary schools. Humans and all other vertebrates are sufficiently similar that, if you know the anatomy of one animal in detail (e.g., bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and organs), you know much of vertebrate anatomy in general.

3. The sieve metaphor, although certainly instructive, is misleading in that it gives the impression of evolution as a top-down phenomenon, with natural selection taking on the role of “Big Brother” (the sieve holder) to dispose of undesirables. The true process is much more collaborative and bottom-up, with species in a given ecosystem cocreating, or “inventing” each other through ongoing mutual adjustments. Whereas emphasis in the sieve perspective is biased heavily toward negative traits, the cocreation view directs attention toward positive traits that increase the success of a species within a given ecosystem.

4. In certain groups of organisms, particularly among plants, species tributaries can rejoin, and frequently do so, through interspecies crosses.

REFERENCES

Brett, C. E., and Baird, G. C. 1995. Coordinated stasis and evolutionary ecology of Silurian to Middle Devonian faunas in the Appalachian Basin. Pp. 285–315 in D. H. Erwin and R. L. Anstey (eds.), New Approaches to Speciation in the Fossil Record. New York: Columbia University Press.

Callenbach, E. 1998. Ecology: A Pocket Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Chiappe, L. M. 2007. Glorified Birds: The Origin and Early Evolution of Dinosaurs. New York: Wiley-Liss.

Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium. 2005. Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome. Nature 437:69–87.

Currie, P. J., Koppelhus, E. B., and Shugar, M. A. (eds.). 2004. Feathered Dragons: Studies on the Transition from Dinosaurs to Birds. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Eldredge, N. 1995. Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory. New York: Wiley.

———. 1999. The Pattern of Evolution. New York: Freeman.

Eldredge, N., and Gould, S. J. 1972. Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism. Pp. 82–115 in T. J. M. Schopf (ed.), Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper.

Gould, S. J. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

Gould, S. J., and Eldredge, N. 1977. Punctuated equilibria: The tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology 3:115–151.

Leakey,M.G.,Spoor,F.,Brown,F.H.,Gathogo,P.N.,Kiarie,C.,Leakey,L.N.,andMcDougall,I. 2001. New hominin genus from eastern Africa shows diverse middle Pliocene lineages. Nature 410:419–420.

Sepkoski Jr., J. J. 1992. Phylogenetic and ecologic patterns in the Phanerozoic history of marine biodiversity. Pp. 77–100 in N. Eldredge (ed.), Systematics, Ecology, and the Biodiversity Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press.

Understanding evolution. 2008. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/. Berkeley: University of California Museum of Paleontology.

Vrba, E. 1985. Environment and evolution: Alternative causes of the temporal distribution of evolutionary events. South African Journal of Science 81:229–236.

Weiner, J. 1994. The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time. New York: Vintage Books.

Xu, X., and Norell, M. A. 2004. A new troodontid dinosaur from China with avian-like sleeping posture. Nature 431:838–841.

Xu, X., Zhonghe, Z., and Xiaolin, W. 2000. The smallest known non-avian theropod dinosaur. Nature 408:705–708.

Zimmer, C. 2001. Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea. New York: HarperCollins.

CHAPTER 7. THE GREEN GRADIENT

NOTES

1. Caffeine in coffee plants and nicotine in tobacco plants are two familiar examples of plant-generated poisons that evolved to discourage herbivory. Of course, these toxic compounds have been utilized secondarily by humans as brain stimulants.

2. As demonstrated by human-introduced insecticides such as DDT, insect populations are often able to respond to chemical assaults through evolution, spreading successful mutations that enable subsequent generations of insects to metabolize the poison.

3. Another remarkable example of mutually beneficial symbionts, one discovered only recently, occurs in some species of conifers. Large evergreen conifers such as Douglas firs and coast redwoods often live for hundreds of years. In contrast, the insects feeding on their needles have brief life spans, generally less than 1 year. So, given that arms races require evolution, one might expect the insects to evolve faster than the trees and thereby overwhelm them. At least some trees, however, enlist symbiotic allies in the form of microscopic fungi that live inside their needles and derive sugars and starch from the tree. In return, the fungi produce chemicals that are toxic to local defoliating insects. Since the fungi are short-lived, they are better able to deal with the rapidly changing tactics of insect attackers, enabling their enormous, stately partners to survive for hundreds or even thousands of years.

REFERENCES

Bakker, R. T. 1978. Dinosaur feeding behaviour and the origin of flowering plants. Nature 274:661–663.

Barrett, P. M., and Willis, K. J. 2001. Did dinosaurs invent flowers? Dinosaur-angiosperm coevolution revisited. Biological Reviews 76:411–477.

Johnson, K. R. 2002. The megaflora of the Hell Creek and lower Fort Union Formations in the western Dakotas: vegetational response to climate change, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary event, and rapid marine transgression. Pp. 329–392 in J. Hartman, K. R. Johnson, and D.J. Nichols (eds.), The Hell Creek Formation and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Northern Great Plains: An Integrated Continental Record of the End of the Cretaceous. Geological Society of America Special Paper 361. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America

Farlow, J. O. 1987. Speculations about the diet and digestive physiology of herbivorous dinosaurs. Paleobiology 13(1):60–72.

Farlow, J. O., Dodson, P., and Chinsamy, A. 1995. Dinosaur biology. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 26:445–471.

Fastovsky, D. E., and Smith, J. B. 2004. Dinosaur paleoecology. Pp. 614–626 in D. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tiffney, B.1997. Land plants as food and habitat in the Age of Dinosaurs. Pp. 352–370 in J. O. Farlow and M. K. Brett-Surman (eds.), The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Wing, S. L., and Tiffney, B. H.1987. The reciprocal interaction of angiosperm evolution and tetrapod herbivory. Review of Paleobotany and Palynology, 50:179–210.

CHAPTER 8. PANOPLY OF PREDATORS

NOTES

1. Claims of the “biggest” theropod dinosaur are generally based on estimates of either body length or body mass. Whereas the South American Giganotosaurus may have equaled or slightly exceeded the total length of Tyrannosaurus, the largest thigh bones (femora) of each suggest that T. rex was the champion heavyweight of the pair. However, a hefty, isolated jawbone of Giganotosaurus may represent an even larger and heavier individual. Suffice it to say that both animals were truly enormous, and others of similar size (though probably not much larger) likely await discovery.

2. Pneumaticity is a remarkable phenomenon that is by no means unique to theropods, or even to dinosaurs. Air-filled pneumatic cavities are typical of many vertebrate groups, including mammals. As mammals, we humans have faces possessing several air pockets; these are the sinuses that tend to fill with thick fluid and become infected when we’re sick.

3. One novel suggestion made by Nathan Myhrvold and Philip Currie is that the long tails of sauropods like Diplodocus were cracked like gigantic whips in order to generate sonic booms capable of deterring theropods. This hypothesis, though perhaps mechanically feasible, seems rather far-fetched and has received minimal support from other paleontologists.

4. In contrast to dinosaurs and reptiles generally, large mammals tend to have relatively long gestation times and give birth to fewer young, so a much smaller proportion of the animals alive at any given moment are nonadults.

5. Evidence that maniraptor sickle claws were used, at least on occasion, as weapons comes from one of the most spectacular fossils ever found—a Velociraptor intertwined in an apparent death pose with a ceratopsian, Protoceratops. In this specimen, found in Mongolia, one of the sickle claws of the predator is positioned in the neck region of the herbivore, and at the time of death it was likely embedded in the tissues surrounding the throat. One of the hands of the Velociraptor is holding or being held by the jaws of the Protoceratops. If interpreted correctly (and there are skeptics), it appears that the two animals became interlocked in a life-and-death struggle and were then quickly buried by the collapse of a sand dune.

6. Thanks to Lindsay Zanno for this provocative word image.

REFERENCES

Barrett, P. M. 2005. The diet of ostrich dinosaurs (Theropoda: Ornithomimosauria). Palaeontology 48:347–358.

Barrett, P. M., and Rayfield, E. J. 2006. Ecological and evolutionary implications of dinosaur feeding behaviour. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 21(4):217–224.

Burness, G. P., Diamond, J., and Flannery, T. 2001. Dinosaurs, dragons, and dwarves: The evolution of maximal body size. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98:14518–14523.

Carpenter, K. 2000. Evidence of predatory dinosaur behavior by carnivorous dinosaurs. Gaia 15:135–144.

Carrano, M. T. 1998. What, if anything, is a cursor? Categories versus continua for determining locomotor habit in mammals and dinosaurs. Journal of Zoology (London) 247:29–42.

Carrano, M. T., Blob, R. W., Gaudin, T., and Wible, J. (eds.). 2006. Amniote Paleobiology: Perspectives on the Evolution of Mammals, Birds, and Reptiles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chin, K., Tokaryk, T. T., Erickson, G. M., and Calk, L. C. 1998. A king-sized theropod coprolite. Nature 393:680–682.

Currie, P. J. 1998. Possible evidence of gregarious behavior in tyrannosaurids. Gaia 15:271–277.

Erickson, G. M., Makovicky, P. J., Currie, P. J., Norell, M. A., Yerby, S. A., and Brochu, C. A. 2004. Gigantism and comparative life-history parameters of tyrannosaurid dinosaurs. Nature 430:772–775.

Farlow, J. O., and Pianka, E. R. 2003. Body size overlap, habitat partitioning, and living space requirements of terrestrial vertebrate predators: Implications for large-theropod body size. Historical Biology 17:21–40.

Henderson, D. M. 1998. Skull and tooth morphology as indicators of niche partitioning in sympatric Morrison Formation theropods. Gaia 15:219–226.

Hutchinson, J. R. and Garcia, M. 2002. Tyrannosaurus was not a fast runner. Nature 415:1018–1021.

Kirkland, J. I., Zanno, L. E., Sampson, S. D., Clark, J. C., and DeBlieux, D. 2005. A primitive therizinosauroid dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of Utah. Nature 435:84–87.

Myhrvold, N. P., and Currie, P. J. 1997. Supersonic sauropods? Tail dynamics in diplodocids. Paleobiology 23:393–409.

Norell, M. A., Makovicky, P. J., and Currie, P. J. 2001. The beaks of ostrich dinosaurs. Nature 412: 873–874.

Rayfield, E. J. Aspects of comparative cranial mechanics in the theropod dinosaurs Coelophysis, Allosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 144:309–316.

Rogers, R. R., Curry Rogers, K., and Krause, D. W. 2003. Cannibalism in the Madagascan dinosaur Majungatholus atopus. Nature 422:515–518.

Sereno, P. C., Larsson, H. C. E., Sidor, C. A., and Gado, B. 2001. The giant crocodyliform Sarcosuchus from the Cretaceous of Africa. Science 294:1516–1519.

Van Valkenburgh, B., and Molnar, R. E. 2002. Dinosaurian and mammalian predators compared. Paleobiology 28:527–543.

Witmer, L. M. 1997. The evolution of the antorbital cavity of archosaurs: A study in soft tissue reconstruction in the fossil record with an analysis of the function of pneumaticity. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 3:1–73.

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CHAPTER 9. HIDDEN STRANDS

NOTES

1. Figures from A. Moldenke, cited in Luoma 1999:97.

2. Statistics derived from Wilson 2006.

REFERENCES

Carpenter, K., 2005, Experimental investigation of the role of bacteria in bone fossilization. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie Monatshefte 2005(2):83–94.

Chin, K. 2007. The paleobiological implications of herbivorous dinosaur coprolites from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana: Why eat wood? Palaios 2007(22):554–566.

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Luoma, J. R. 1999. The Hidden Forest. New York: Holt.

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Wilson, E. O. 2006. The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. New York: Norton.

CHAPTER 10. OF HORN-HEADS AND DUCK-BILLS

NOTES

1. Several groups of dinosaurs—in particular, hadrosaurs, ceratopsids, and sauropods— possess greatly enlarged noses, which may have had a thermoregulatory role, keeping the brain cool by shedding heat from warmer blood and returning cooler blood to the brain region.

2. One of the more famous examples is an innovative experiment conducted by biologist Malte Andersson on African widowbirds. Males of this species tend to have elongate tails, long thought to be useful in attracting mates. Andersson cut off the lengthy tail feathers of some of these males and glued them onto the already-long tails of other males. This left him with three groups to observe: one with regular adult-length tails, one with very short tails, and the other with very long tails. He watched their behavior and found that females most preferred males with artificially lengthened tails and least preferred those with missing tail feathers. So, despite the fact that elongate tails inhibit flight abilities and make these males more visible to predators, a strong selective advantage can arise that is passed on to subsequent generations.

3. The can-opener ceratopsid became Einiosaurus procurvicornis. Eini is the Blackfeet Indian word for “buffalo.” Since the fossils were recovered from lands on the Black-feet Reservation, and since these dinosaurs appear to have moved in large herds across the Western Interior plains just as buffalo did in more recent times, the name seemed apt. It also honored the Blackfeet Indians and an important animal in their history. The second name, procurvicornis, is Latin for “forward-curving horn.” In full, then, the name translates as “buffalo-lizard with the forward-curving horn.” The second ceratopsid, the one with low bony growths instead of horns, was dubbed Achelousaurus horneri. Achelous was a Greek river god that had the ability to change shape at will. To battle the famous Heracles (Hercules of Roman mythology) over a woman, Achelous turned himself into a bull. Heracles won the battle only after tearing a horn from the bull’s head. This horned dinosaur lost its horns during the course of evolution. The second part of the name honors Jack Horner for all his contributions to paleontology, as well as for his generosity in allowing me to work on this remarkable fossil collection.

4. The reasons behind this female mimicry of males may relate to several factors, including predator defense—so that females don’t stand out as targets for predators—and increased within-group competition—enabling females to fend off advances from younger males.

5. Recent innovations offer hope that we may be able to assess sexual dimorphism more accurately in the future. Over the past several years, it has become possible to accurately estimate the age at death of a given dinosaur, an important innovation that will help rule out the influence of growth in future analyses. As for decisive demonstration of sexual differences, a recently published study raises a glimmer of hope. This study, conducted by Mary Schweitzer (North Carolina State University) and colleagues, documents a specialized bone type in a specimen of Tyrannosaurus that appears very similar to the bone laid down by living female birds during egg-laying season. If confirmed by additional discoveries, this method could provide a means of attributing at least some specimens to females.

6. Among living animals, flank butting occurs in numerous groups whereas violent head ramming is restricted to a handful of specialized species. Some investigators have argued that, based on the microstructure of the dome, even flank butting would have been unlikely in pachycephalosaurs. Instead, they suggest a display function for pachycephalosaur domes. Still other investigators have countered this view by arguing that the forces incurred in head-to-head butting would have been smaller than previously thought and could have been absorbed by the thickened domes. Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, it has been proposed that the considerable species variation in the shape of pachycephalosaur skull domes is most consistent with a range of mate competition behaviors—with flat-domed forms engaging in flank attacks, more rounded domes used in head butting, and the tallest domes serving solely as display devices. Clearly, with ongoing disagreement and several outstanding hypotheses, paleontologists still have work to do on this matter.

7. Occasional exceptions are known; an exquisitely preserved skeleton of the hadrosaur Maiasaura in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum includes the impression of what may be a dewlap, or a large flap of skin below the neck.

8. In rare instances, captive animals from two different species can produce offspring. For example, tigers and lions have been known to breed, with the product sometimes labeled a “tigron.” However, most of these unusual unions do not result in viable offspring, and even those that do typically do not involve species that meet in the wild. So we still regard such species as distinct from each other.

9. The tenuous nature of some cichlid species barriers was recently revealed when nearby logging caused rapid erosion, followed by silt buildup in one of the lakes. Unable to see the coloration patterns used to identify members of their own kind, these fishes expanded their reproductive horizons, mating with fishes from closely related species. These unnatural unions resulted in offspring that in turn have also been able to reproduce, and the end result has been at least a temporary decrease in the diversity of these fishes.

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CHAPTER 11. THE GOLDILOCKS HYPOTHESIS

NOTES

1. A few lizards, particularly among the groups known as varanids and teids, are daytime hunters that have somehow circumvented the limitations of their physiology to be active for many hours.

2. Ever wonder why you get goose bumps when it’s cold? It’s because we evolved from much hairier primate ancestors. Goose bumps represent a futile attempt to retain heat by raising our body hair and thereby increasing the thickness of our (now nearly absent) insulation layer.

3. Prior to significant human impacts, what we today refer to as African lions spanned all of Africa plus some of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, for a total area larger than North America. Thanks to human impacts, such vast ranges clearly do not apply today to large carnivores, yet considerable evidence suggests that continental-scale species ranges were typical in the not-too-distant past. Indeed, one of the major conservation challenges we currently face involves connecting chunks of wildlands with protected corridors in order to support sustainable populations of large predators such as bears, wolves, and lions. One of the most important conservation insights is that ecosystems cannot be preserved as tiny patches and sometimes even as large game parks. Huge expanses of land, or at least a series of interconnected patches, are needed to keep an ecosystem intact.

4. See Humphreys 1979 and McNab 2002.

5. See Farlow 1993.

REFERENCES

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Erickson, G. M. 2005. Assessing dinosaur growth patterns: A microscopic revolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20(17):677–684.

Erickson, G. M., Rogers, K. C., and Yerby, S. A. 2001. Dinosaurian growth patterns and rapid avian growth rates. Nature 412:429–433.

Farlow, J. O. 1990. Dinosaur energetics and thermal biology. Pp. 43–55 in D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria. Berkeley: University of California Press.

———. 1993. On the rareness of big, fierce animals: Speculations about the body sizes, population densities, and geographic ranges of predatory mammals and large carnivorous dinosaurs. American Journal of Science 293A:167–199.

Farlow, J. O., Dodson, P., and Chinsamy, A. 1995. Dinosaur biology. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 26:445–471.

Farmer, C. G. 2002. Reproduction: The adaptive significance of endothermy. American Naturalist 162:826–840.

Humphreys, W. F. 1979. Production and respiration in animal populations. Journal of Animal Ecology 48:427–453.

McNab, B. K. 2002. The Physiological Ecology of Vertebrates: A View from Energetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Padian, K., and Horner, J. R. 2004. Dinosaur physiology. Pp. 660–671 in D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Reid, R. E. H. 1997. Dinosaurian physiology: The case for “intermediate” dinosaurs. Pp. 449–473 in J. O. Farlow and M. K. Brett-Surman, eds., The Complete Dinosaur. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Seebacher, F. 2003. Dinosaur body temperatures: The occurrence of endothermy and ectothermy. Paleobiology 29:105–122.

Xu, X., Norell, M. A., Kuang, X., Wang, X., Zhao, Q., and Jia, C. 2004. Basal tyrannosauroids from China and evidence for protofeathers in tyrannosauroids. Nature 431:680–684.

Xu, X., Tan, Q., Wang, J., Zhao, X., and Tan, L. 2007. A gigantic bird-like dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of China. Nature 447(7146):844–847.

CHAPTER 12. CINDERELLASAURUS

NOTE

1. Growing fossil evidence suggests that the Chinle will also be an important resource for unraveling the origin of dinosaurs from closely related, two-legged archosaurs some-times called “dinosauromophs.”

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Bakker, R. T. 1975. Dinosaur Renaissance. Scientific American 232:58–78.

———. 1986. The Dinosaur Heresies. New York: Morrow.

Benton, M. J. 1983. Dinosaur success in the Triassic: A noncompetitive ecological model. Quarterly Review of Biology 58:29–55.

Charig, A. J. 1972. Evolution of the archosaurs pelvis and hind limb: An explanation in functional terms. Pp. 121–155 in K. A. Joysey and T. S. Kemp (eds.), Studies in Vertebrate Evolution. New York: Winchester.

Diamond, J. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.

Fraser, N. 2006. Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Galton, P. M., and Upchurch, P. 2004. Prosauropoda. Pp. 232–258 in D. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmólska (eds.), The Dinosauria. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Grimaldi, D., and Engel, M. S. 2005. Evolution of the Insects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Irmis, R. B., Nesbitt, S. J., Padian, K., Smith, N. D., Turner, A. H., Woody, D., and Downs, A. 2007. A Late Triassic dinosauromorph assemblage from New Mexico and the rise of dinosaurs. Science 317:358–361.

Irmis, R. B., Parker, W. G., Nesbitt, S. J., and Liu, J. 2007. Early ornithischian dinosaurs: The Triassic record. Historical Biology 19(1):3–22.

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Parker, W. G., Irmis, R. B., and Nesbitt, S. J. 2006. Review of the Late Triassic dinosaur record from Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin 62:160–161.

Parker, W. G., Irmis, R. B., Nesbitt, S. J., Martz, J. W. and Browne, L. S. 2005. The Late Triassic pseudosuchian Revueltosaurus callenderi and its implications for the diversity of early ornithischian dinosaurs. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Biological Sciences 272:963–969.

CHAPTER 13. JURASSIC PARK DREAMS

NOTES

1. As of the writing of this book, the future of the visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument is in question. The building has been deemed unsafe and closed until it can be repaired. It is my sincere hope that the reopening of the building will include a reinvigoration of the paleontology program at this famous national landmark.

2. Even for ecologists studying living plants and animals, unraveling diet and other aspects of life history is a remarkable challenge, generally resulting in partial answers acquired over many years of meticulous work in both the field and the laboratory.

3. Since theropods were also egg layers, the majority of carnivorous dinosaurs on the Morrison landscape were nonadults as well. Studies by Mark Loewen (University of Utah) and others indicate that juvenile allosaurs likely possessed greater speed and agility than adults. Perhaps young allosaurs consumed a diet based on smaller, nimble prey such as lizards, amphibians, and mammals. Conversely, greater foot speed may have been necessary for juveniles to keep pace with adults. Still another (to my mind, unlikely) alternative is that allosaurs engaged in cooperative hunting, with the faster juveniles responsible for herding prey animals toward lurking adults. Finally, it’s possible that the greater speed and agility of juveniles was not an adaptation at all but merely an evolutionary holdover. In other words, theropods ancestral to Allosaurus may have been smaller and more agile even as adults, and the loss of these qualities in adult allosaurs simply reflects an evolutionary shift toward bigger bodies.

4. This relationship between body size and range size explains why Loch Ness monsters, sasquatches, and yetis are so incredibly improbable. Obviously, a lone serpent (“Nessy”) is effectively a dead serpent, since it cannot reproduce. Yet even a family or group of serpents is doomed by low numbers. Survival over deep time minimally requires thousands of animals alive at any given moment. So, while the idea of a small, relict population of prehistoric serpents persisting for countless millennia in a remote Scottish loch makes for wonderful stories (and attracts tourist dollars), it makes no sense from an ecoevolutionary perspective and underlines the myopic view of deep time still held by most of us. Die-hard believers might counter by invoking the lottery defense; that is, we just happen to be alive to witness (through occasional, fleeting glimpses caught on film only as dark, misshapen blurs) the very last descendant of a Mesozoic plesiosaur, today known as the Loch Ness monster. After all, some animal has to be last. Maybe, but the odds of this being the case, given the lack of representative fossils for the past 65 million years and the major faunal turnovers that have occurred in the marine realm since the dinosaur extinction, seem astronomically remote at best.

REFERENCES

Gates, T. A. 2005. The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry as a drought-induced assemblage. Palaios 20(4):363–375

Farlow, J. O. 2007. A speculative look at the paleoecology of large dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation, or, life with Camarasaurus and Allosaurus. Pp. 98–151 in E. P. Kvale, M. K. Brett-Surman, and J. Farlow (eds.), Dinosaur Paleoecology and Geology: The Life and Times of Wyoming’s Jurassic Dinosaurs and Marine Reptiles. Shell, WY: GeoScience Adventures Workshop.

Foster, J. R. 2003. Paleoecological analysis of the vertebrate fauna of the Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Rocky Mountain region, U.S.A. In New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin 23. Albuquerque: New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

———. 2007. Jurassic West. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hummel, J., Gee, C. T., Südekum, K.-H., Sander, P. M., Nogge, G., and Clauss, M. 2007. In vitro digestibility of fern and gymnosperm foliage: Implications for sauropod feeding ecology and diet selection. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences, doi:10.1098/rspb.2007.1728 (published online).

Rayfield, E. Norman, D. B., Horner, C. C., Horner, J. R., Smith, P. M., Thomason, J. J., and Upchurch, P. 2001. Cranial design and function in a large theropod dinosaur. Nature 409:1033–1037.

Schweitzer, M. H., Suo, Z., Avci, R., Asara, J. M., Allen, M. A., Teran Arce, F., and Horner, J. R. 2007. Analyses of soft tissue from Tyrannosaurus rex suggest the presence of protein. Science 316:277–280.

Schweitzer, M. H., Wittmeyer, J. L., and Horner, J. R. 2007. Soft tissue and cellular preservation in vertebrate skeletal elements from the Cretaceous to the present. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences 274:183–187.

Stevens, K. A., and Parrish, J. M. 2004. Neck posture, dentition, and feeding strategies in Jurassic sauropod dinosaurs. Pp. 212–232 in V. Tidwell and K. Carpenter (eds.), Thunder-Lizards: The Sauropodomorph Dinosaurs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Therrien, F., Henderson, D. M., and Ruff, C. B. 2005. Bite me: Biomechanical models of theropod mandibles and implications for feeding behavior. Pp. 179–237 in K. Carpenter (ed.), The Carnivorous Dinosaurs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Upchurch, P., and Barrett, P. M. 2000. The evolution of sauropod feeding mechanisms. Pp. 79–122 in H.-D. Sues (ed.), Evolution of Herbivory in Terrestrial Vertebrates: Perspectives from the Fossil Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Valkenburgh, B., and Molnar, R. E. 2002. Dinosaurian and mammalian predators compared. Paleobiology 28:527–543.

Zaleha, M. J., and Wiesmann, S. A. 2005. Hyperconcentrated flows and gastroliths: Sedimentology of diamictites and wackes of the Upper Cloverly Formation, Lower Cretaceous, Wyoming, U.S.A. Journal of Sedimentary Research 75(1):43–54.

CHAPTER 14. WEST SIDE STORY

NOTES

1. We have since found and excavated more complete specimens from Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, including (in 2008) what appears to be an even larger duck-billed dinosaur.

2. Mike Getty is a truly remarkable fellow worthy of additional mention. In 1999, immediately after I began work in a joint position at the University of Utah and the Utah Museum of Natural History, I began a search for a paleontology collections manager. Mike, also a Canadian, was working for the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta and he came highly recommended for the position. In trying to describe Mike’s qualities, one of my Alberta colleagues described him as follows: “Let’s put it this way, Scott. If you dropped Mike naked into the middle of the badlands, many miles from the nearest road, not only would he make it out alive, he’d be carrying fossils with him.” Hiring Mike Getty was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. He has ably led both the field and laboratory programs at the museum, in addition to managing vertebrate fossil collections. In particular, the numerous successes of our field expeditions in Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument—one of the most difficult places to do paleontology that I have ever seen or heard about—have occurred under Mike’s capable direction.

3. Additional funding was subsequently secured from several sources, including the National Science Foundation, the Discovery Channel, and the University of Utah. However, the bulk of the funds have come from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), thanks in large part to the efforts of Alan Titus, Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, Laurie Bryant (BLM), and Scott Foss (BLM).

4. The Alf Museum of Paleontology, located in Claremont, California, is the only paleontology museum in the nation located on a high school campus. The complete Gryposaurus skull was found by a crew of students and educators from the school, and the leader of the expedition, Don Lofgren, kindly agreed to let us include the skull as part of our study.

5. Referring back to chapter 8, we know that it is possible, and perhaps likely, that some of these small coelurosaur theropods were omnivorous and/or, particularly in the case of the ornithomimosaurs, possibly even obligatory herbivores.

6. The formal scientific names for “West” and “East America” are Laramidia and Appalachia, respectively.

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Dodson, P. 1996. The Horned Dinosaurs: A Natural History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Lehman, T. M. 1987. Late Maastrichtian paleoenvironments and dinosaur biogeography in the western interior of North America, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 60:189–217.

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Ryan, M. J., and Evans, D. C. 2005. Ornithischian dinosaurs. Pp. 312–348 in P. J. Currie and E. B. Koppelhus (eds.), Dinosaur Provincial Park: A Spectacular Ancient Ecosystem Revealed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Sampson, S. D., Gates, T. A., Roberts, E. M., Getty, M. A., Zanno, L. E., Loewen, M. A., Smith, J. A., Lund, E. K., Sertich, J. and Titus, A. L. In press. Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument: A new and critical window into the world of dinosaurs. Learning from the Land, Vol. 2. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management.

Vrba, E. S. 1987. Ecology in relation to speciation rates: Some case histories of Miocene-Recent mammal clades. Evolutionary Ecology 1:283–300.

CHAPTER 15. THE WAY OF ALL CREATURES

NOTES

1. Most biologists are confident we are now in the midst of the sixth great extinction, this one precipitated by humans. See the epilogue for more on this topic.

2. I must credit two individuals, Kirk Johnson and David Fastovsky, who helped inspire my conversion to “the other side” of this debate.

3. Shortly after the melting of Snowball Earth, large multicellular life exploded in diversity, a coincidence that has led some workers to suggest that the two events were causally linked (Hoffman and Schrag 2000). That is, the blossoming of life, like that of dinosaurs, may have occurred in the aftermath of a global catastrophe.

4. The quotation comes from Margulis 1999:123.

5. Unfortunately, the potential for correcting this system has its limits, which currently seem to be exceeded by the rapid emission of vast quantities of greenhouse gases by human industrialization.

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EPILOGUE WHISPERS FROM THE GRAVE

NOTES

1. For more on the Center for Ecoliteracy, go to www.ecoliteracy.org.

2. An outstanding leader in this work is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (www.birds.cornell.edu/).

3. The Madagascar Ankizy Fund is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit education corporation established through the Stony Brook Foundation. For those interested in learning more or getting involved, go to www.ankizy.org.

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