<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Aug 24, 2010, at 9:44 AM, BillK wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">OK, they can have the credit if we change it to 'Survival of the<br>accidentals'. If it had been a different type of extinction event we would all now<br>have scales and claws</span></blockquote><br></div><div>Luck was involved but in any mass calamity mammals would have had an advantage over dinosaurs. Mammals at that time were much much smaller than dinosaurs and thus more numerous, big animals are rarer than small animals, so whatever the disaster there was a greater chance that by pure luck enough mammals would survive to form a breeding population than that dinosaurs would. Mammals were prepared to take advantage of luck and dinosaurs were not.</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark </div><br></body></html>