Dinosaurs and evolution, page 1

reply to post by joshter

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I dont believe they were killed by a meteor in the first place. The ones that adjusted evolved to different species. The ones that didnt adjust died off. Main thing they needed to change was their massive size. Theres no way any of the species that lived in the times of the dinosaurs, would have be able to live in the massive sizes they were. They also had to evolve their nest and egg handling and develop some sort of fur or feathers to help adjust their body temperature for the ever increasing coldness of the winter and the heat of the summer.

Incase someone wonders where I get the idea of the temperature extremes changing, I am a firm believer in the growing earth theory which explains things a lot better than the regularily accepted theory of earth forming 4-5 billion years ago and then staying the same size and mass until today. I believe the reason why they actually died was because they couldnt migrate anymore after the continets spread apart and the only ones who could continue to migrate and they still do it today, was the ones who evolved into birds. Besides the birds, that are widely accepted as the living dinosaurs, I believe it is completely possible some of the other animals that live today can quite possibly be other living dinos that still may or may not have the instict to migrate like all of their ancestors supposedly had.

So even though alot of the dinosaurs did die off about 60million years ago it is quite possible theres still plenty of their offspring around, in some cases closer than anyone might imagine.

reply to post by CreeWolf

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The assumption that mammals are somehow different from dinosaurs is sort of interesting. I also find it interesting that everyone assumes that the massive dinosaurs were somehow the only race that grew huge in their times. Thats absolutely flawed in the first place. The mammals that mysteriously appeared and "dominated" the earth after dinosaurs were massive compared to the ones running around these days. Same thing with every other species we had back then. They were all too large to even function if they would be alive today at the size they existed back then.

Now why would "nature" make insects that would have crushed under current conditions by their own weight in the size and form they were back then? Why were there large enough insects with wings frail enough so they would have snapped right of if it even tried to move em around? Im sure the "explanation" about nature making a mistake and fixing it and making everything smaller and smarter is good enough for some. I find it very interesting that all the living things just happened to be massive back then and then gradually shrunk to their current sizes out of what, the intelligent design of the "mother nature"?

I personally believe in looking for causes for these effects and not assuming its all a big plan some invisible thing made up just for the heck of it. The answer is quite simple actually but as it doesnt fly with the big bang and magically exploding universe. So it cant be right and so its considered a joke to even think about exponentially increasing gravity due to growth of the planets, stars and the whole universe around us over billions of years. I mean it clearly makes more sense we had insects so huge that they could not, in the current conditions even live, due to their circulatory systems, let alone grow up, reproduce and die of old age. Yeah they just magically "existed" and after a while just died off.

[edit on 28/8/07 by Gonjo]

Dale Russell proposed this idea in 1982 also. He came to the conclusion that bipedal predators that existed at that time, would have evolved into intelligent beings similar to humans. He also made a model of what he thought it would look like and named them dinosauroid.

The link takes you to the wiki article of it, unfortunately he dose not have his own article regarding this and they have grouped his theory with that of Reptilians. I’m not even going to touch that subject.

Originally posted by Gonjo

Now why would "nature" make insects that would have crushed under current conditions by their own weight in the size and form they were back then? Why were there large enough insects with wings frail enough so they would have snapped right of if it even tried to move em around?

Insects were larger because of the higher oxygen content of the Carboniferous era.

For the giant insects that roamed Earth 300 million years ago, there was something special in the air.

A higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere let dragonflies sometimes grow to the size of hawks, and some millipede-like bugs reached some six feet (two meters) in length, a new study suggests.

Now that the proportion of oxygen has decreased, however, bugs can't grow much larger than they do now, the authors write.

...

During the late Carboniferous period (354 to 290 million years ago), however, oxygen levels were much higher than they are now, partly because coal swamps that leaked the gas into the air were very common.

"Back then, there was 31 to 35 percent oxygen in the air," study lead author Kaiser said. "Now we have about 21 percent."

That meant insects needed smaller quantities of air to meet their oxygen demands, allowing the creatures to grow much larger.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

These are just the salient snippets from a much larger and very interesting article that explains it all.

[edit on 28-8-2007 by MajorMalfunction]

Originally posted by keymaster
Who says dinosaurs died out? Aren't modern day reptiles and amphibians a distant relative to the dinosaurs?

WE are just as much distant relatives to dinos as modern reptiles are (basically). It's like humans, apes, and monkeys. Dinosaurs all belonged to one group, that includes reptiles. But in breaking those groups down all forms of dinos were related together more then modern (or ancient) reptiles. So, modern terms humans and apes are part of the same group as monkeys; but humans and apes are more closely related and not of the same sub category as monkeys. In fact there were numerous reptiles living side by side with dinos in their time, but they are not the same thing, which leads nicely to...

Originally posted by Opulisum
Dinosaurs still exist here on Earth today..

Crocodiles for example.. they look exactly the same from what they looked like millions of years ago, they even ate dinosaurs.

Crocodiles havn't evolved much since those times either. Sure, some dinosaurs gained feathers and later evoled to the different bird species but crocodiles and alligaters have stayed the same for millions of years, that says something doesn't it?

Crocs and Aligators (and Sharks) are definately NOT dinos, never have been, never will be. There are similarities, but they are different.

from en.wikipedia.org... :

The taxon Dinosauria was formally named in 1842 by English palaeontologist Richard Owen, who used it to refer to the "distinct tribe or sub-order of Saurian Reptiles"

Modern reptiles are from an entirely different order of the reptile family (actually one of 4 different orders). The easiest way to differentiate is by the tail; modern reptiles drag theirs, dinos did not. Obviously there are many other different characteristics but this is the easiest to spot to me.

Originally posted by tomcat ha
Dinosaurs never got extinct. Look in your backyard. Do you see a bird? or better said a avian bipedal dinosaur? Yes birds are dinosaurs.

The classic dinosaurs got extinct but the avian did not.

I find it hard to believe in this day and age that arguably more people believe dinosaurs turned into modern reptiles (because the look the same on the outside), but few can grasp the idea that they are more closely related to birds (because their insides are so similar). Or have even heard that they are related to birds.

I heard a good theory on the whole ability to fly thing. To paraphrase: These dinos were developing feathers to help keep their eggs warm (more surface area to trap body heat (oh yeah it is highly probable that dinos were warm blooded, another thing that sets them aside from regular reptiles (I forgot about that (how embedded can this get?)))). Anyway, feathers, or proto feathers, were good for keeping eggs warm. These dinos were the big toe clawed type *-raptor the ones that ran up jumped, latched on and clawed with their back feet (we've all seen these in the movies). These same dang dinos were running around jumping all over the place trying to catch food, flapping their arms about. Soon their leaping and flapping started carrying them farther and farther, until they all evolved into wings... Well, that's the readers digest version anyway. To make it more complicated the feathers/proto feathers had other uses such as camoflage or attracting mates. So they evolved for other reasons but turned out to be really helpful with gliding which lead to flight.

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