Re: mosasaurs

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Norm MacLeod wrote,
"If you're looking for a analogue to non-avian dinosaurs in terms of public
image I've long been struck (not least ironically) by the public image of
birds. If we can understand what it is about birds that causes people
literally to flock to birding activities, books, etc., maybe we'll better
understand why people are similarly interested in dinosaurs."

A good point. Birds have fascinated people for a very long time, as is
evident from the number of bird images in Egyptian art and medieval European
manuscripts. One traditional interpretation is that birds represent freedom,
since they can fly -- and since most people aren't aware of the real
constraints that birds live with. I don't think that this is the full story
(birds are pretty, challenging, and have varied behavior, for instance), but
let's halt here for a moment.

Some of the most inspiring artwork of mosasaurs and plesiosaurs shows them
"flying" through water, with views from below. The plesiosaurs' extreme
maneuverability is intriguing. So I'd say that successful analogies have
already been drawn to modern cetaceans, but the bird analogy is apt.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

P.S. If you think it's hard to capture the public's interest with mosasaurs,
try doing it with invertebrate trace fossils. (Thalassinoides rex, terror of
the seas!) Still, a news reporter was sufficiently intrigued by William
Miller's "Complex Trace Fossils" symposium at NAPC to interview several
ichnologists about a pagoda-shaped trace fossil, Zoophycos:

http://cgi.mercurycenter.com/premium/scitech/docs/fossil17.htm
By Glennda Chui, published Tuesday, July 17, 2001, in the San Jose
(California) Mercury News.