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ecological communities of these rivers evolved in those river valleys, beholden to
these indirect effects of dinosaurs.
Now this is where a paleo-curmudgeon might preemptively scold me (aug-
mented with much finger wagging) by saying, “Correlation is not causation!” Yet it
is also unrealistic to accept the notion that dinosaurs, through their habitual move-
ments, had no effect whatsoever on these or any other rivers during their times.
Consequently, a valid question to ask is not whether dinosaurs affected the course
of rivers or other water bodies in the past, but rather how much did dinosaurs af-
fect these and other rivers? Although perhaps unanswerable, this inquiry is worth
reflecting upon.
Sowhileponderingthisconceptofhowdinosaurschangedtheverylandscapes
on which they walked, keep in mind how some may have been obliged to tread
where generations had walked before. In that respect, here are the final two sen-
tences from Thulborn's 2012 paper about the sauropod tracks of Western Australia:
If sauropods were as wary as elephants in negotiating sloping terrain,
they would naturally have tended to walk on the lower and safer
ground—which, in practice, would be any area that was already trodden
by earlier visitors. In doing so, they would automatically have followed,
deepened, and widened the routes pioneered by their predecessors,
thereby reshaping the topography of the landscape they inhabited.
In short, dinosaur trails influenced the behavior of dinosaurs, traces that affec-
ted their decisions in everyday life, perhaps extending back into the Jurassic but
very likely bythe Early Cretaceous. Inturn, those dinosaur-made trails transformed
the land and waterways for future generations, traces that extended well beyond the
extinction of their species and descendants, affecting all life thereafter.
Dinosaur-Caused Avalanches
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