I keep coming across more and more evidence of the actual presence of dawn age reptiles on Earth. It is sufficient to spark a reappraisal of our thinking on the matter. I come to the idea as dismissive as any researcher. Like how could these animals avoid detection on an ongoing basis?
The one element of commonality is that these are reptiles whose ecological niche is the same as shared by crocodiles. They are swamp dwellers who can and will spend most of their time in water and emerge possibly only to lay eggs. Like crocs and turtles, they will quickly go into water on birth. It is reasonable that all the dawn age reptiles shared this behavior.
It is not unreasonable that theropods, stegosaurs and apatosaurus could be still extant if their cousins sharing the same ecology are also extant. The swamps certainly solve the food supply issue for the vegetarians who typically become huge. The theropods also do well hunting an ample supply of crocodiles.
The key observation here is that the instant we understand it is all about swamps, the question changes to asking why they are not there if the crocs are. In other words they had a survivable niche that allowed such survival.
I will add that this ends another issue. These animals are all primarily aquatic first and at best come out to catch a bit of sun. Been aquatic, they maintain stable body temperature equivalent to ambient in water. This also suggests that their demand for oxygen is surprisingly low and may be supported by the additional expedient of ingesting water. Persistent reports of extant Plesiosaurs continue to crop up and they clearly do not need to breech in order to supply oxygen. Such animals would also migrate back to ancestral swamps in order to produce a clutch.
Of course, we have had a long string of eyewitness reports successfully recognizing these animals. Some of them are simply excellent and carry the ring of truth. They have been easily named and in addition, a millennia old collection of pottery from Mexico established characteristics latter confirmed by archeological discovery. Also we have a carved stegosaurus in a Cambodian temple that is indisputable.
The fact remains that the whole works can reside comfortably in large swamps, spending all their time in the water and perhaps been active mostly at night. They rely on aquatic plants for sustenance mostly and this also provides excellent cover even in the daytime. Besides, how could you differentiate the head of a reptile from another reptile if that is all that you got to see?
On top of that human witnesses are rarer than the reptiles are likely to be. Human penetration has always been daunting simply because of the heavy insect problem and the restriction to daytime travel. These animals look just as much at home at night as during the day. The only one I wonder about is the stegosaurus.
Therefore, we can make a hesitant conjecture. These critters may still be extant and functioning in the major global swamps. Locating them will also be a daunting challenge and will take a major effort. Occasional eyewitness reports have been futile to date since these animal are simply too large for capture or even killing when encountered. We are simply never heavily enough armed in the first place and having handling equipment to hand is also unlikely. So far, almost no one has been prepared to believe these reports.
That ultimately suggests that if we hope to ever capture the plant eaters we need great luck or we need to locate their nesting spots deep in the swamps.
There are already enough individual eye witness reports to support some form of effort.
It is also noteworthy that the pottery models show a sauropod maintaining an arced back in order to walk. It looks very much like a traditional image of a dragon and displays a ridge of tooth like fins on the back. Both features fit an aquatic model were flexibility in the back is normal and spikes on the back would discourage attention from crocodiles.
I still want to say that this cannot be true, but I am also sure that our access to this particular niche has been spotty at best. A detailed search with plenty of remote cameras for both night and day is surely called for.
The one element of commonality is that these are reptiles whose ecological niche is the same as shared by crocodiles. They are swamp dwellers who can and will spend most of their time in water and emerge possibly only to lay eggs. Like crocs and turtles, they will quickly go into water on birth. It is reasonable that all the dawn age reptiles shared this behavior.
It is not unreasonable that theropods, stegosaurs and apatosaurus could be still extant if their cousins sharing the same ecology are also extant. The swamps certainly solve the food supply issue for the vegetarians who typically become huge. The theropods also do well hunting an ample supply of crocodiles.
The key observation here is that the instant we understand it is all about swamps, the question changes to asking why they are not there if the crocs are. In other words they had a survivable niche that allowed such survival.
I will add that this ends another issue. These animals are all primarily aquatic first and at best come out to catch a bit of sun. Been aquatic, they maintain stable body temperature equivalent to ambient in water. This also suggests that their demand for oxygen is surprisingly low and may be supported by the additional expedient of ingesting water. Persistent reports of extant Plesiosaurs continue to crop up and they clearly do not need to breech in order to supply oxygen. Such animals would also migrate back to ancestral swamps in order to produce a clutch.
Of course, we have had a long string of eyewitness reports successfully recognizing these animals. Some of them are simply excellent and carry the ring of truth. They have been easily named and in addition, a millennia old collection of pottery from Mexico established characteristics latter confirmed by archeological discovery. Also we have a carved stegosaurus in a Cambodian temple that is indisputable.
The fact remains that the whole works can reside comfortably in large swamps, spending all their time in the water and perhaps been active mostly at night. They rely on aquatic plants for sustenance mostly and this also provides excellent cover even in the daytime. Besides, how could you differentiate the head of a reptile from another reptile if that is all that you got to see?
On top of that human witnesses are rarer than the reptiles are likely to be. Human penetration has always been daunting simply because of the heavy insect problem and the restriction to daytime travel. These animals look just as much at home at night as during the day. The only one I wonder about is the stegosaurus.
Therefore, we can make a hesitant conjecture. These critters may still be extant and functioning in the major global swamps. Locating them will also be a daunting challenge and will take a major effort. Occasional eyewitness reports have been futile to date since these animal are simply too large for capture or even killing when encountered. We are simply never heavily enough armed in the first place and having handling equipment to hand is also unlikely. So far, almost no one has been prepared to believe these reports.
That ultimately suggests that if we hope to ever capture the plant eaters we need great luck or we need to locate their nesting spots deep in the swamps.
There are already enough individual eye witness reports to support some form of effort.
It is also noteworthy that the pottery models show a sauropod maintaining an arced back in order to walk. It looks very much like a traditional image of a dragon and displays a ridge of tooth like fins on the back. Both features fit an aquatic model were flexibility in the back is normal and spikes on the back would discourage attention from crocodiles.
I still want to say that this cannot be true, but I am also sure that our access to this particular niche has been spotty at best. A detailed search with plenty of remote cameras for both night and day is surely called for.
