Your New Lists

Rearrange the fauna and flora according to their taxonomic order, but separate the mammals into two groups-herbivores and carnivores. This should enable you to recognize biotic relationships not even hinted at in the original list. Your rearranged list would be similar to the below chart.

Finding answers to the following questions will reveal the superiority of the rearranged list over the original data. In modern ecosystems there are usually more individual herbivores than carnivores. Was this true of the Irvington paleoecosystems?

Does the list give evidence of still undiscovered carnivores and herbivores at Irvington? Assuming that it does, would the discovery of these animals make such difference in the listed carnivore-herbivore ratio? Why?

You now have the basic components necessary for reconstructing our extinct ecosystem: (1) the nonliving surrounding, found in Dr. Savage’s description of the Irvington sediments, and (2) the animals and plants. In other words, information to this point has provided us with a reasonably clear picture of the ancient Irvington environment and the kinds of organisms that lived in that environment.