Posted on 04/02/2005 6:50:29 AM PST by yankeedame
Actually, after the dinos, there was a period of huge, vicious and carnivorous land and sea mammals.
Some of them were as much as 40 feet tall.
People have speculated a warmer general climate, others have said the O2 level in the air was higher, allowing critters to get lots bigger.
I'll bet even Dr. Bukk ain't got no teef like dim on his website.
Flossin' musta been a tuff for this critter.
Geez, I thought I had head noises!
Cool animal ping.
The reason these marsupials went extinct was that they used to grind their teeth in their sleep. One bad night, it was all over.
"A wombat bit my sister once."
I fell off of a Combat Wombat 30 or 20 times
Nope, but they aren't sure where the Dingo originated from, either.
Just found a great site: australianfauna.com, whose homepage says
"No rubbish, just fair dinkum Aussie animal info. ". (I just love that accent :)
ROFL! I would not want to be the dentist who had to clean their cavities :-)
The platypus is not a marsupial. It is a Monotreme.
what the heck is that...looks like a sabre toothed beaver
PUt a ball cap on its head and it'll have an uncanny resemblence to a certain maker of "documentaries".
No doubt. Based on a diet of eucalyptus and bark it would have been a diluted turpentine mix. Nasty.
I just gave her an 'over the shoulder' alert to your ping.
She's playing Bejeweled2 at the moment.
She said of this strange killer wombat "Cool."
LOL! Thanks for the over-the-shoulder relay :-)
Welcome.
She's on now, cuttin' up about some of the Opus threads.
I think she'll be here soon.
Try some old BS-TV documentaries on Africa.
Elephants, Giraffes, Hippos strip the large old trees and grasses and destroy the plant life and then move on leaving a wasteland that becomes barren desert.
American and Euro "environmentalists" conveniently ignore the simple fact that some animals destroy the environment - any American farmer or rancher knows you can only run so many head per acre and keep both cattle and pastures healthy and productive.
There are smaller grazing animals but they migrate to greener prospects without eating everyone's future lunch literally.
As interesting and wonderful as enormous animals seem they easily can outgrow their environments.
Some domestic grazing animals eat grass down to the roots and others graze and get suffficient nourishment without damaging the pasture.
There are areas in Africa that are overstocked with elephants and need thinning of the herds and others where elephants are poached to non-sustaining levels and could use new replacement stock and tight management.
The natives used trees as their primary heat and cooking fuel source for thousands of years and stripped their backyards clean - Europe and Asia has much of this too while they all criticize the USA.
But the world's "Enviro-Nutzies" like to tell Africans what they can and cannot eat and many Africans themselves have no sense in sustaining herds.
How could they tell it was a marsupial?
Or were they just assuming 'cause other Aus animals are?
Rebuilding the Skeletons - Identifying Marsupial Bones
Most marsupials have a maximum of 3 premolar and 4 molar teeth, whereas placental mammals generally have a maximum of 4 premolar and 3 molar teeth. In addition the crowns of marsupial teeth have a distinctive form different from that of placental mammals. . .The lower jaw of marsupials has a pronounced angular process (often called the marsupial shelf) which is an area where the jaw muscles are attached. Mammals do not have such a shelf on their lower jaw bones.
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