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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 1101525" data-attributes="member: 2205">Both of the species I referenced were found in Texas and New Mexico, actually.  There were other titanosaurs in South America, Africa, Europe, and most of Asia.That's a fair statement.  However, the fauna you call typical isn't merely Mk II of late Jurassic fauna, like nodosaurs are to stegosaurs; they are from completely different lineages.  And, like I said, they weren't typical.Ceratopsians and tyrannosaurs only appear in Mongolia and northern North America.  That's not typical, that's geographically constrained.  And the quintessential ceratopsians were only in North America.  I call them aberrant, because I've read that in plenty of professional publications.  Dr. Paul Serreno said as much, if I remember correctly.  Of course, he's also one of the ones who's uncovered the previously little known fauna of areas like Late Cretaceous South America, North Africa, India, etc.I prefer to go straight to the source -- Nature and Science articles were written by paleontologists, not journalists, and tend to be more rigorous rather than speculative.  Not that speculation isn't good -- I also like to get the more unofficial views of dinosaur professionals on the Cleveland Museum of Natural History hosts the mailing list most frequented by practicing paleontologists, and is great for getting the scoop on stuff they don't print professionally because they don't have the evidence to support what they believe yet.  But, like I said, I haven't seen anything new in terms of evidence for dino waning before the Yucatan asteroid hit, assuming that's what killed them off.  Bakker published the idea fifteen? years ago, and it wasn't new then.  But the idea still hasn't amassed enough evidence to be entirely convincing.  Preservational bias and the small sample size makes "fossil counting" evidence extremely suspect anyway.  Most paleontologists don't use it.Oh, I'm not uncalm.  Can't I disagree without it being an argument?  I should think I hardly need to present references to titanosaurids being in the Southern US, though -- the most famous dinosaur footprint series in the world, found by Roy Chapman Andrews in a Texas riverbed, was made by a titanosaurid and carcharodontosaurid.  The type speciman for Alamosaurus was found in Ojo Alamo, New Mexico.  That's easily available public knowledge.  As is the presence of carcharodontosaurid and allosaurid top carnivores everywhere except Mongolia and the northern part of North America.</blockquote>

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