The Impossible Size of Dinosaurs

Originally posted by SorensDespair
reply to post by MysterE

 

Are you suggesting that the Earth's mass has greatly increased? Where did the extra mass come from?

The Expanding Earth theory suggests it's the Sun.

The Sun has ejected 600 million tons of matter per second over the last 4/5 billion years. Sure it's matter converted into energy but the theory also suggests that via some process not fully understood yet, some of the energy is reconverted into mass at the Earth's core (by memory).

Edit To Add:

Also the theory suggests that it's not just earth that has expanded. All the planets have. This also explains why the inner solar system took more hits from rogue asteroids etc in the past. Because our gas giants weren't big enough to sweep most of them up...

Anyhoo... it's just a theory.

IRM

[edit on 7/12/09 by InfaRedMan]

reply to post by ADVISOR


Back on the atmosphere topic I found this..

To produce an effective buoyancy force on dinosaurs the Earth's atmosphere would have to be thick enough to have a density comparable to the density of water. By summing the forces acting on a typical dinosaur such as a Brachiosaurus the density of the necessary atmosphere is calculated as:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/47c800b7cd31.jpg[/atsimg]

where DF is the density of the fluid, Ds is the density of the substance submerged in the fluid such as the dinosaur, and S.F is the scaling factor. Inserting into this equation a scaling factor of 3.2 and an overall vertebrate density of 970 kg/m3, the Earth's atmospheric density during the late Jurassic period can be calculated to be 670 kg/m3. This says that to produce the necessary buoyancy so that the dinosaurs could grow to their exceptional size, the density of the Earth�s air near the Earth�s surface would need to be 2/3�s of the density of water.

The Solution to the Dinosaur Paradox

And my favorite part

the wonders of our reality often exceed the limitations of many people's imagination

-E-

Originally posted by SorensDespair
I haven't read too much into it, but I thought that there was a much higher level of oxygen in the atmosphere in prehistoric times, due to the larger vegetation. I know this resulted in much larger insects.

The carboniferous period (ca. 360-300 million years ago) was the geological period with the very high level of oxygen in the atmosphere (about 35%). During this geological period lived gigantic insects, spiders and centipedes.

Dinosaurs lived later. The largest dinousaurs lived during the jurassic (ca. 200-145 million years ago) and the Cretaceous (145-65). During these geological periods the level of oxygen in the atmosphere was not much different from today.
www.geophysik.uni-kiel.de...

Here a link to Ted Holdens claims and calculations
www.skepticfiles.org...
And here some criticism
www.talkorigins.org...

Atmospheric oxygen was around 30%, compared to today's 21%. www.thefreelibrary.com... This would have enabled the small-lung dinosaurs to live and breathe. If a reptile can stay alive, it continues to grow in size. Take, for example, an anaconda.

Could be the dinosaurs had no real enemies and were allowed to grow indefinitely to a ripe old age.

The problem of gravity is easily solved by a water-rich planet. You see the same today with the hippo. Spend a lot of time in or around water, and your weight decreases.

[edit on 12/7/2009 by Jim Scott]

It's not hard to believe Dinosaurs were that big.. why.. my girlfriend is nearly that size and her teeth are just as sharp!

I'm not sure how the earth would gain mass i.e. gravity over the course of let’s say a billion years, but I wonder what effects the density of the atmosphere would have on plant and animal if let’s say it was double back then from 14.7 psi we have today at sea level. Also with our core still liquid, where would all that extra air go?

If we did suggest a lighter earth then I would think we would see creatures that would have very light skeletal structure since heavy bone and muscle would not be needed. Dinosaurs have very heavy bone and muscle structure and those who might suggest they would not be able to function in earth's gravity we have today must have data to back up that claim, or is it just their opinion?

Originally posted by ADVISOR
I still think it has more to due with the air mixture. For example:

Nitrogen is an essential component of all proteins. Nitrogen deficiency most often results in stunted growth.

Given that the worlds atmosphere was higher in nitrogen, it caused plants and animals of all type to be bigger.

Animals and plants are still essentially the same, based on the "higher life form" principle. When say essentially, I mean we are made from the same building blocks.

For a simple selection of life forms requirments, see search results. you can also replace "Plant" with "Animal" in the linked link.

Point being, gravity as we know it to be, is based on mass and the energy of said mass. the earth has maintained the same approximate mass for eons. Suggesting it to have had a lower gravity based on none solid energy is a theory that needs plenty of work.

Not saying it is impossable, but based on science as we now it, at least how I know it, it is close to not very likely.

You hit it on the head about what the atmosphere (and temperature) was like back then. I don't know if you remember but back a few months ago they found fossils 2 million years old of a massive snake that just laying prone was a height of 4 feet, and they estimated that it may have been as long as 70 feet in length. They said it was possible for snakes back then to be as big as that because the temperature of the planet was higher and snakes tend to grow larger dependent on their environment conditions. Also on MonsterQuest they talked about siting of massive spiders in africa and south america that where spotted and we do have large spiders but the one that everybody knows about is the Chicken spider from the Amazon that is at least a foot across and has burrows in the ground and many of the natives know of larger ones that took away dogs and other animals. The reason I bring this up is that the skeptics where saying that it would be impossible (but not improbable) for a massive spider to be around today with the same type of lungs. there lungs are designed like books side by side and the only way for there to be a massive spider would be the oxygen content being higher which it was millions of years ago.

This is a link to a few theories about what people think about how dinosaurs got so big. One that sticks out is that the dinosaurs had to be cold blooded because unless they haven't found something an animal that big and warmblooded would have cooked it's insides like a boiled potato. The gravity thing is a possibility, the smaller the gravity the taller and larger things are,l just makes sense. You could say that the atmosphere was thicker to explain how the pterodactyls with a large wings could glide or fly through the air, but a thicker atmosphere isn't condusive to a large creature. I don't know which it could be, but I never even questioned the large size because I thought the bones where strong enough and it turns out that they aren't.

dinosaurs.about.com...

reply to post by InfaRedMan


You can't have mass magically appear. I do believe you are wrong on this one.

Originally posted by Longtimegone
reply to post by InfaRedMan

 

You can't have mass magically appear. I do believe you are wrong on this one.

I'm not wrong. It's not my theory... however I do find many aspects of it compelling. I suggest you do some research. It's not suggesting mass magically appears (like the Big Bang)

IRM

This is an intriguing thread that raises some interesting questions.
The first thought that came to my head was the peculiar result that the apparent measured speed of light has been decaying in recorded human history.

ldolphin.org...
ldolphin.org...

What if the gravitational constant has been likewise increasing? For example if the total energy is conserved but the velocity of light is decaying then

E = m c^2 implies that m = E / c^2 and thus m is getting bigger ! G may also increase for similar reasons.

What bothers me about the atmoshpere theory is this part from my post above.

to produce the necessary buoyancy so that the dinosaurs could grow to their exceptional size, the density of the Earth's air near the Earth's surface would need to be 2/3's of the density of water

Is this conclusion correct? Would the atmosphere have been much more fluid-like? The calculation seems too simple to reach that conclusion.

Check out this website The Paradox of Large Dinosaurs

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1ff57d89ae4d.jpg[/atsimg]

-E-

[edit on 8-12-2009 by MysterE]

I have been wondering about this exact same thing. Everything seemed to be bigger, even humans.

The expanding earth theory is what seems most plausible to explain this. My current hypothesis is that all planets/stars are "inverse black holes" or white holes. These are what increase the mass of planets and thus makes 'em grow.

Dinosaurs and countless other species have gone extinct because the planet has gained mass which leads to increased gravity and changed life parameters (atmosphere, weather---).

Yes the atmospheric composition is probably the major reason that many creatures could grow larger in ancient times. Higher oxygen content allowed oxygen to reach the extremities even in larger animals.

Some dinosaurs had another trick that allowed them to eventually evolve into birds: hollow bones. But some huge dinosaurs may have had hollow bones too:

Huge dinosaur bones discovered hollow.

Scientists who study the largest dinosaurs -- a group called sauropods, which includes Supersaurus and Apatosaurus--do not know what to make of the bones. While some small carnivorous dinosaurs had hollow bones, "it has never been mentioned in the literature [on sauropods]," says sauropod authority John S. McIntosh of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

Any species of four-legged, herbivorous, saurischian dinosaur in the suborder Sauropoda. The sauropods include the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that ever lived. authority John S. McIntosh of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

Yet hollow ilia might not be that unusual among sauropods. McIntosh says researchers may not have recognized such features while examining fossils before. Moreover, paleontologists have not had the opportunity to check the insides of unbroken dinosaur bones. McIntosh says computerized axial tomography computerized axial tomography also known as CAT scanning, or other nondestructive tests might reveal whether intact fossils are solid bone.

Diagnostic imaging method using a low-dose beam of X-rays that crosses the body in a single plane at many different angles. , also known as CAT scanning, or other nondestructive tests might reveal whether intact fossils are solid bone.

Aside from finding fine-grained rock inside the bone, Miller says, other signs indicate parts of the Supersaurus pelvic bones were hollow. Much of the recently excavated ilium is crushed, possibly from the weight of sediments accumulating on top of the bone as it fossilized. The Utah researchers have also found bony struts that span the inside of the ilium, probably strengthening the pelvis, which helped support an animal weighing as much as 30 tons.

Miller and others have speculated that hollow bone sections served to cut down on body weight and reduce the amount of bone the animal had to produce. "What I suspect, and this is speculation, is that there was probably something like marrow in there. It may have been a site for blood cell formation," Miller says.

If the hollow bones are confirmed on large dinosaurs, that, along with the oxygen content of the atmosphere would go a long way in explaining why they could grow larger than elephants, and would make a lot more sense than some of the other, unconventional, theories.


=================

Regarding the other theories,


Electric Universe: I think the electric universe theory is accepted by less than 1% of professionals. So you're really out on a limb if you buy that.


Expanding Earth Theory: Most geologists reject it. But the Earth IS gaining mass, from meteors and cosmic dust:

www.sciencedaily.com...

Each year nearly 40,000 tons of cosmic dust fall to Earth from outer space. Now, the first successful chronological study of extraterrestrial dust in Antarctic ice has shown that this amount has remained largely constant over the past 30,000 years

So that amounts to 2,600,000,000,000 tons of mass gained by the Earth over the last 65 million years if that rate was constant and if anything it was probably slightly higher in the past so that number is probably a little bit larger. So could that make a difference? While that sounds like a lot, compare that to the Earth's mass of 6,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 short tons hypertextbook.com... and it's not enough to make a lot of difference, the percentage increase is so small it's insignificant.

Changing gravitational constant: I think the theories about the gravitational constant changing are pretty far-fetched.

[edit on 8-12-2009 by Arbitrageur]

Originally posted by MysterE
A popular theory for the extinction of the dinosaurs is an asteroid impact. Could it be possible that the impact not only extinguished the dinosaurs, but added a signifigant amount of mass to the earth as to dramatically increase the mass, and therefore increase the gravitational field?

What do you think ATS?

-E-

Low gravity is one very real possibility...

I've always thought that low Gravity coupled with an extremely oxygen/nitrogen rich atmosphere were the foundations and key to their size. Supposedly the entire planet was covered with rich vegetation.

Prime habitat for herbivores and their stalkers. Plenty of food for both. Plenty of space in which to roam. Think of the thickest South American or African jungles on a global scale. Plenty of oxygen producing plants.

Just a Theory.



[edit on 8-12-2009 by SLAYER69]

Single vertebra

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ebd0ba43dcb7.jpg[/atsimg] [atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a4d74563fa70.gif[/atsimg]
Argentinosaurus

Height: 70 feet (21.4 meters) About the size of a six story building.

Length: 120 feet (36.6 meters) Three long school buses end to end.

Weight: 100 tons

Period: Late Cretaceous
Argentinosaurus, recently discovered in Argentina, will probably will turn out to be the largest dinosaur yet discovered, larger than Ultrasauros or Seismosaurus. although Seismosaurus will likely continue to hold the record for total length due to its extremely long tail, characteristic of Diplodocidae. The cross section of one vertebra found of Argentinosaurus measures over five and one half feet in height. Evolutionary biologists believe that dinosaurs were able to reach such colossal sizes due to a colossal metabolism. At the height of its adolescence, Argentinosaurus was probably able to gain about 100 pounds a day!

[edit on 8-12-2009 by SLAYER69]

reply to post by SLAYER69


To add to your post, there is the question of how the Brachiosaurus was able to supply blood to it's head (being so much higher then where the heart typipcally is)

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d32c2c4772d0.jpg[/atsimg]

Or possibly, it was easier to pump the blood to higher elevations due to lower gravity.

-E-


[edit on 8-12-2009 by MysterE]

Originally posted by MysterE
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

To add to your post, there is the question of how the Brachiosaurus was able to supply blood to it's head (being so much higher then where the heart typipcally is)

Or possibly, it was easier to pump the blood to higher elevations due to lower gravity.

-E-

Well unfortunately we are bound by present day conditions. The closest thing we can compare them to is the giraffe. But the Giraffe is not a reptile nor does it have a long counter balance tail. Which I think is some how connected and a critical part of their circulatory system.

EDIT TO ADD: Maybe somebody here at ATS who is more learned than I can chime in with some possible knowledge on Fluid dynamics?

That with the fact that we are not entirely sure what the planet was like during that period leaves much to speculate on.

[edit on 8-12-2009 by SLAYER69]

One thing I never understood is that if we all came from a single organism, how did some creature get to be much bigger then others? Why did they divide up?

reply to post by Equinox99


One possibility may be that the organisms went their seperate ways and adapted based on their seperate environments.

-E-