THE POLITICS OF PALEONTOLOGY : (OR ... MY DINOSAUR IS BIGGER THAT YOURS).

Byline: Betty Kwong Daily News Staff Writer

You can just hear the measuring tape recoil with a satisfying snap. In the world of paleontology, size counts for a lot. And this one's a biggie.

The small group that has slaved over reconstruction of the skull in a Canoga Park warehouse soaked in the statistic.

Their ambitiously named Giganotosaurus, the first of its kind yet found, will outsize by more than a comfortable margin the last prehistoric creature that lay claim to the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur, says Rodolfo Coria, paleontologist heading the excavation in Argentina.

Until now, paleontologist Paul Sereno and his Carcharodontosaurus have dominated the paleontologic limelight, their photographs splashed across the covers of National Geographic and Popular Science with words like ``remarkable'' and ``monstrous'' describing the 90 million-year-old monster unearthed in the Moroccan Sahara. Its skull alone measured 5 feet, 4 inches - enough to anoint it king of prehistoric carnivores.

But not for long, Coria says. Carcharodontosaurus has new competition.

The full skeleton of the 97 million-year-old Giganotosaurus is not yet assembled, but its completed skull already measures more than 6 feet long.

That's about all Coria and his crew will say for now; they're carefully guarding Giganotosaurus' specific measurements until they've got a sponsor nailed down and the scientific paper published in the dinosaur trades.

It's all part of the politics of paleontology.

Like the creatures resurrected, competition in the field of paleontology is fierce. What's worse, making it big in this business has less to do with skill and talent than with luck and the lie of an animal millions of years dead.

That, perhaps, explains the bizarre - even destructive - lengths to which some members of the paleontologic elite have gone to even out the playing field.

Two of paleontology's founding fathers, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh, are among the most notorious when it comes to one-upmanship.

Cope, born in Philadelphia in 1840, named more than 1,200 new species of animals by the time he died in 1897.

Marsh, born in Lockport, N.Y., in 1831, is credited with discovering more than 1,000 fossil vertebrates and describing 500 more before he died in 1899.

They were friends before foes, traveling together on digs, according to photojournalist Louie Psihoyos in his book, ``Hunting Dinosaurs.'' The friendship began to unravel when Marsh surreptitiously paid Cope's crew to send fossils to him; it ended for good when Marsh pointed out a mistake Cope had made in reconstructing a long-tailed sea reptile (he put the head on the wrong end).

Their feud spawned intense hunts for fossils, with each bent on outnumbering the other. The rivalry rose to ridiculous heights, according to Psihoyos, to the point where they and their crews would smash bones they didn't use solely to render the site useless to their rivals.

To be sure, modern-day dinosaur hunters aren't as nasty as their forefathers. But the politics of paleontology haven't been plowed under completely. Money, many suspect, has a lot to do with it.

Less than $1 million is spent annually on dinosaur field work around the world, according to Don Lessem, who founded the Dinosaur Society in Waban, Mass., to raise money for paleontological field work.

Compare that to the roughly $14 billion NASA spends on space exploration every fiscal year.

Because of limited funding, there are only about 30 paleontologists in the world who are paid to dig for dinosaurs, said Canadian paleontologist Phil Currie.

``We have never been good at marketing ourselves,'' Currie said. ``Most people who are in this field are here because we love it so much.''

Making money, he said, is the last thing on the minds of paleontologists when they're in the middle of a dinosaur hunt.

``Right now, this dinosaur hunt is hot,'' said Mary Odano, director of Valley Anatomical Preparations in Canoga Park, where the Giganotosaurus is being assembled.

``Right now, we have it,'' Odano said of the largest meat-eating dinosaur yet found. ``But that's this year.''

Bragging rights, as always, are temporary at best.Most dinosaur hunters today know that trying to win in the study of earthly evolution is a futile pursuit.

``Doesn't matter if you compete or not. The fossils will tell you if you're right or wrong,'' Currie said.

``You can't think ahead that you're going to have the biggest dinosaur, because fossilization is an accident,'' Coria agrees. ``The competition is now about ideas, not about size. It's about who can propose the most revolutionary and most accurate idea about the dinosaur's evolutionary struggle.''

Still, Coria feels the pressure to outperform his colleague.

``People are trying to push me into competition with Paul (Sereno),'' Coria said.

``I don't feel that. I don't feel that I have any competitors,'' he said, laughing.

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Photo

Photo: Casts of various dinosaur bones abound at Valley Ana tomical Preparations in Canoga Park. Paleontologists make no bones about the fact that competition in the field of paleontology is fierce, and size counts for a lot.

Tom Mendoza/Daily News