The Impossible Dinosaurs - Megafauna and Attenuated Gravity

Kronia.com ^ | Ted Holden

[Swordmaker]

Diameter does affect the gravitational force you feel at "sea level", because if the earth's diameter is smaller, then someone standing at "sea level" is closer to the center of the earth.

But, if the mass of the smaller "earth" is the same as the larger "earth" then the acceleration toward that body should be the same.

I do not subscribe to the smaller earth theory.

[jeddavis]

Muscle tissue is nearly identically the same for all vertebrate animals; there’s no way to think dinosaur muscle was better than ours.

Wrong again. Using your logic we would be significantly stronger than chimpanzees (average male weight 90 - 115 pounds). Not even close!

Location of muscle attachments is part of it, but chimpanzees are significantly stronger than humans in spite of their smaller weight.

Experts agree that muscle is the same for all vertibrate animals, e.g. Knut Nielson's, "Scaling, Why is Animal size So Important", Cambridge Univ Press, 1984

"It appears that the maximum force or stress that can be exerted by any muscle is inherent in the structure of the muscle filaments. The maximum force is roughly 4 to 4 kgf/cm2 cross section of muscle (300 - 400 kN/m2). This force is body-size independent and is the same for mouse and elephant muscle. The reason for this uniformity is that the dimensions of the thick and thin muscle filaments, and also the number of cross-bridges between them are the same. In fact the structure of mouse muscle and elephant muscle is so similar that a microscopist would have difficulty identifying them except for a larger number of mitrochondria in the smaller animal. This uniformity in maximum force holds not only for higher vertebrates, but for many other organisms, including at least some, but not all invertebrates."

The comparison between humans and apes is usually done wrong; unlike the case with all monkeys and apes, our legs are the major limbs so that the comparison is between our legs and the chimp's arms. Want to see how lame chimps really are? Try getting one of them to run a competitive 440 or take on a competent karate artist in a fight.

Aside from that, the comparison in the article did not involve apes; the contrast was between a top human athlete who works out with weights 25 hours a day and uses food to flavor his dyanabol with, and a herbivore (sauropod) whose body is mainly gut and digestive system. There's no possible way the herbivore figures to be stronger on a per pound basis.

[Coyoteman]

Just don’t try arm wrestling a chimp.

[Swordmaker]

Does shilling for Apple turn your brain to putty or something?

Does using Windows require you to be insulting?

I have no knowledge of a Ted Holden ever being a member of FreeRepublic, banned or not. You seem to have had a problem with him in the past. Why?

I see nothing anonymous about this article. I placed the name of the author on it.

I am well informed on the biological mechanics involved and I find the subject matter intriguing and the questions he raises deserve answers, not off hand dismissal and certainly not derision if you DON'T HAVE an answer. Ignoring a fact is not part of the scientific method.

Having said that, what is YOUR explanation for:

• the ability of Teratorn's (one fossil specimen of Argentavis magnificens has a wingspan of 830 cm or 27 feet compared to a female California Condor's maximum wingspan of around 9 feet) to fly - if conditions when it lived were the same as today where the same conditions will not allow modern birds of similar build, scaled up to equal the size of the teratorn, to fly? The Teratorn is 3 times larger than the Condor so, using the square cube law, it has 9 times the surface area (staying warm might be a problem) but should then weigh, assuming proportionality in all internal organs and build (the bones seem to be just proportional larger versions of the smaller birds' bones), 27 times more than our 23 lb Condor... a mind boggling 621 pounds! That's some bird.

• extinct 32" dragon flies, proportionately identical to their largest modern 8" version, that were able to fly? Or were their elaborate wings only decorative? These insects are 4 times larger than their modern cousins... they would have to have 16 times as much surface area as the modern one and 64 times the volume and presumably the mass, if internals were also proportional. How did they fly? Were their muscles 64 times stronger?

• Seismosaurus and other mega-fauna's seeming ability to ignore the Square Cube law and still be able to walk around?
  
  The new "largest dinosaur," Amphicoelias fragillimus, the black one on the left.
  A previous "largest dinosaur," Seismosaurus, fits under the tail.

  Carpenter scaled up a Diplodocus to fit this new super-sized vertebra, and his Amphicoelias fragillimus measures a full 58 meters (190 feet) from snout to tail. The estimated mass of this mega-sauropod would be about 122,400 kg (about 270,000 lbs or 135 tons).

  An average elephant is only 10 feet tall at the shoulders and weighs in at around 10,000 pounds. If we multiply the height, width, and length of our average elephant by 3 times (estimated from comparing the elephant in the above picture with that largest Dino's torso, tail base to neck base), we get the 27 times factor (3³) of the square cube law requires for the fragillimus' mass, but that's ignoring the neck and tail... something tells me that the paleontologists are under calculating the tonnage because it would get absolutely ridiculous if they add those in... Anyway, that still huge. The mass the muscle has to move is 27 times what it was but the cross sectional area is only 9 times larger. Since muscle strength is apparently directly proportional to cross sectional area, how can a muscle that is only ideally 9 times stronger, lift a limb or body that is 27 times heavier? What chemical process drove their muscles yhen that now doesn't drive ours?

  Another interesting thought... an average modern elephant eats approximately 4.5% of its body weight in food every day... scaling that up to our mega-saurus, that would translate to ~12,000 lbs of forage a day for our fragillimus... he'd have to keep moving to eat that much. The elephant drinks 1 Gallon of water per 50 lbs of weight per day... the fragillimus would have to drink 5400 gallons of water everyday to keep up with the elephant... again, he'd have to keep moving... fairly rapidly, I'd think.

[ThePythonicCow]

But, if the mass of the smaller "earth" is the same as the larger "earth" then the acceleration toward that body should be the same.

Do you feel the same pull toward the earth when you are near Pluto, as when you are on the beach in Brazil?

From Newton's Universal Gravity Equation:

---

Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation states that two objects will attract each other with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of distance between them. The Universal Gravity Equation is:

F = GMm/R²

where

• F is the force of attraction between two objects
• G is the universal gravitational constant; G = 6.67*10^-11 N-m²/kg². The units of G can be stated as Newton meter-squared per kilogram-squared or Newton square meter per square kilogram.
• M and m are the masses of the two objects
• R is the distance between the objects, as measured from their centers
• GMm/R² is G times M times m divided by R-squared

  ---

Now -- notice that 1/R-squared term.

Your weight due to the earths gravity varies with:

• Your mass.
• The earth's mass.
• The inverse of the distance between you and earth, squared.

Dinosaurs were confined to the earth's surface. They did not swim deep, climb tall mountains or fly (and even those activities don't change one's elevation all that much.)

If the earth has a smaller diameter, and you're on the earth's surface, then you are closer to the center of the earth, and experience greater gravitational force due to the earth's mass.

Of course, as noted in earlier posts, if the earth is spinning, then some, perhaps even all, of this gravitational force is counterbalanced by a so-called centrifugal force.

[js1138]

I have no knowledge of a Ted Holden ever being a member of FreeRepublic, banned or not. You seem to have had a problem with him in the past. Why?

Ted Holden posted for a long time as Medved. He was suspended several times and finally banned. He has been back a number of times under various names and banned when he was caught. He is posting on this thread under an account name that is not Ted Holden or Medved. I thought there was a rule against banees returning under new names.

I am not expert enough to comment on the square cube problem, but anyone who tries to solve the "problem" by assuming gravity has changed its value is a crank. Ted Holden is a crank. He is known throughout the Internet as the clown prince of astrophysics.

[ThePythonicCow]

I can think of only four ways that that Diplodocus could have taken a single step without a total and soon fatal collapse:

• He lived on a planet with a different universal gravitational constant than we have now.
• He lived on a planet with a much, much smaller mass than present day earth.
• He lived on a planet with a much larger radius than present day earth.
• He lived on a rapidly spinning planet.

I cast my vote for the last one of these.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/742.html

When the Days were Shorter

[ThePythonicCow]

420 million years old ... the day had only twenty-one hours

I don't think that's short enough, recent enough.

For those big dinosaurs to walk, the earth would have had to had days of (guessing wildly) five to ten hours, and this would have had to have been the case 65 million years ago, when the biggest dinosaurs lived.

Note that a day of 100 minutes would put objects on the surface of the earth at close to escape velocity. That 100 minutes is the approximate time it takes a low earth satellite to orbit.

[dr_lew]

Ted Holden was infamous on Usenet back in the 80’s. Cf. Google Groups. “Having been foolish enough to waste my time trying to beat some sense into the head of Ted Holden,...” - 1985

[Fred Nerks]

just as the massive dino’s existed, so did the nautiloids, all the rest is theory and conjecture...the dating itself is nothing but guesswork, IMO.

Galileo’s last words, after he recanted...’and yet it moves’, remember?

The evidence is there. Something was different. Although I do not doubt there are many who would prefer the evidence did NOT exist...

AND YET IT IS THERE!

[js1138]

Cosmological solutions are the work of crank physics. There isn’t any plausible scenario that involves reduced gravity.

I don’t have a solution, but the simplest guess is simply that the weight estimates for these creatures are way off.

It’s amusing that creationists are quick to criticise paleontologists for extrapolating entire creatures from a few bones, but when such extrapolations suggest that Newton and Einstein are wrong about physics — hey, let’s scrap physics.

[ThePythonicCow]

There isn’t any plausible scenario that involves reduced gravity.

You make a false dichotomy, between reducing gravity, and changing the weight estimates.

I agree that gravity didn't change much since the earth formed as a giant, red hot, roiling, boiling sea of molten rock about 4.6 billion years old. Roughly the same mass, give or take a factor of two the same diameter, and always the same gravitational constant.

But ... why do you dismiss the "faster spinning" possibility?

[Swordmaker]

I can think of only four ways that that Diplodocus could have taken a single step without a total and soon fatal collapse:

• He lived on a planet with a different universal gravitational constant than we have now.
• He lived on a planet with a much, much smaller mass than present day earth.
• He lived on a planet with a much larger radius than present day earth.
• He lived on a rapidly spinning planet.

How about this one:

• He lived on a planet with a huge polar aligned tidal force opposing the pull of gravity as his planet orbited around a large gravity producing mass.

? We also have the distinct problem that Diplodocus' difficulty with his morning amble 67 million years ago is not the only mega-fauna with problems... the Teratorns of both North and South America must have been having a large problem with flying to look for that early sloth within the last 20,000 years... going extinct only 12,000 years ago.

Was the air denser then? No, that can't be the answer because the keeled breastbone of the Teratorns is NOT a proportionately super large adaptation compared to modern birds... indicating that it didn't have to anchor huge flight muscles (27 times wider and thicker) to overcome his 27 times non-proportional increase in mass than the smaller birds. In addition, the wing area, although larger than modern Condors, is only 9 times larger.... to support 27 times the mass in flight. Not a very good aerodynamic design... and one that shows no adaptation to having to support a lot more mass. Ergo, the force that the bird was designed to counter... gravity... had to be less.

Could a humming bird scaled up just three times its normal size and 27 times its normal mass still fly? How much energy would it need to consume to stay in the air and hover... and how large would the wings have to be?

[Swordmaker]

I don’t have a solution, but the simplest guess is simply that the weight estimates for these creatures are way off... It’s amusing that creationists are quick to criticise paleontologists for extrapolating entire creatures from a few bones, but when such extrapolations suggest that Newton and Einstein are wrong about physics — hey, let’s scrap physics.

So, let's see, you'd prefer to trash the Square Cube Law... Something that is based very firmly in physics, engineering, and mathematics... so you can ignore a real observation. Notice it is called a "law." That has a little more weight than "theory." It tells us WHAT we have observed in every instance, no exceptions allowed... that's what makes it a law. A theory will tell us WHY it may do it.

Are you postulating that these mega-fauna, all of them, have large bladders filled with hydrogen to offset their mass? They're made up of some kind of matter that no longer exists? Were their bones the consistency and density of balsa wood??? Perhaps their muscles were made of styrofoam?

Some who have wished the problem of how megafauna could have lived would go away have actually postulated that it is the fossils that have grown... that somehow the bones and other remnants of these ancient animals have somehow increased three to four times the size they were in life... along with their ancient preserved footprints... and coprolites (dung)... and eggs... I guess by magic.

Almost every great scientific discovery came about because of inconvenient facts that the accepted wisdom could not account for... and that often the mavens of that accepted wisdom refused to acknowledge existed. Dogma can be a very bad thing.

The problem here is that we have several laws in conflict with observed facts. Perhaps the facts are wrong... but so far I see no evidence that they are. If the mass of the mega-fauna is as described, and the conditions when and where they lived are as we live under today, then several well established scientific conclusions are wrong. Something has to give. Something has to be tossed into the trash. We have to start over and find a Theory that comfortably incorporates the new data.

Cosmological solutions are the work of crank physics.

But, js1138, our current cosmology has FAILED to provide an answer to these facts. That implies that the answers WILL indeed impact cosmology in some way... perhaps to overturn the current accepted cosmology... perhaps to extend what we know so that we have a better cosmology.

Seems to me that Plate Tectonics was the stuff of cranks and crackpots not too long ago... as was the catastrophic explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs... and the evidence for them was swept under the rug... and proponents were trivialized... as you are attempting to trivialize Holden who is merely insistent in raising inconvenient facts.

You admit you have no solution to the problem presented... but you prefer not to look at the implications of the facts presented. For some reason, some of those implications or possibilities of answers are "off limits" because... why? Because someone who also refuses to look at the problem says so?

To that I say "But still it moves... and flies."

[samtheman]

You mean that’s NOT your theory? Oh... you are right then, it is far far better to mock what you can ignore rather than try to explain it. So much easier!

It's easy to mock a theory that's moronic.

We don't have to speculate on a supposedly faster-spinning earth 65 million years ago. We can test this moron-spawned-theory right now.

Do you think you weigh less in Brownsville, Texas than you do in Bangor, Main? Do you think you weigh less in Quito, Ecuador than you do in Barrow, Alaska, or than you do on the North Pole? Well, actually, you do.

But how much less?

Do you weigh more on the north pole than on the equator?

This means that the centripetal acceletation at the equator is about 0.03 m/s2 (metres per seconds squared). Compare this to the acceleration due to gravity which is about 10 m/s2 and you can see how tiny an effect this is - you would weigh about 0.3% less at the equator than at the poles!

So let's say the earth 65 million years ago was spinning twice as fast as it is now. Wow! Those big dinosaurs would way .6% less at the equator than in the northern latitudes. I guess you're saying that they all hunkered down at the equator and never stepped a foot north or south. Is that YOUR theory???

[samtheman]

Gravity is balmy today.

(Trivia question: who wrote that in his diary?)

[ThePythonicCow]

He lived on a planet with a huge polar aligned tidal force opposing the pull of gravity as his planet orbited around a large gravity producing mass.

That one seems unlikely to me, but what do I know.

Changing the earth's rotation rate is kinda easy, if you can change its diameter.

There is intriguing geological evidence that the earth's diameter was quite a bit smaller at one time. If that was the case, it -would- have been smaller, hence rotating faster, hence supporting more massive land animals.

[ThePythonicCow]

I guess you're saying that they all hunkered down at the equator and never stepped a foot north or south. Is that YOUR theory???

Yes - that's part of it. What's more, the earth would have bulged more at the equator, and hence the surface water would have accumulated closer to the poles, and a band around the equator been the dry land.

[js1138]

But ... why do you dismiss the "faster spinning" possibility?

For the reason given by another poster. To produce that reduction in weight called for by Ted's conjecture, The earth would have needed a day of two or three hours, and would have needed it 65 million years ago, roughly.

Any reduction in rotation rate sufficient to produce the current day length would have released enough kinetic energy to melt the crust. Only the tidal effects of the moon are slowing the earth, and not by enough to account for twenty hours per rotation.

There is also the minor problem that mega-dinos account for just a few species out of millions. Why does every other line of evidence point to unchanging gravity?