The Impossible Dinosaurs - Megafauna and Attenuated Gravity

Kronia.com ^ | Ted Holden

[Swordmaker]

What is this problem with Dinosaurs and gravity? And what does it have to do with weightlifters? PING!

If you want on or off the Electric Universe Ping List, Freepmail me.

[nikos1121]

So there was less gravity back then?

[KSCITYBOY]

Might answer my “why were they so big” question.

[Swordmaker]

So there was less gravity back then?

That's what the evidence seems to point to... or that Gravity was somehow attenuated by another means. For animals of these masses to have stood up, lifted their heads, walked, mated, etc., the implication is that Earth's gravity should be an apparent 1/4 to 1/3 G... not the 1 G we experience today.

Another possibility, an outside one, is that dinosaur and other mega-fauna muscles were three to four times stronger per cross-sectional square centimeter than modern animal muscles. . . and that dinosaurs were far more efficient at converting food into calories to drive those super muscles.

[samtheman]

This is a very heavy load of BS.

Without some kind of theory, or even speculation, as to how the gravitational force of a planet of basically constant mass changes over time, this is like some kind of “aliens abducted my wife and got her pregnant” story.

[ThePythonicCow]

The link you provide above for this article is http://www.kronia.com/symposium/holden.txt, however it seems that this text comes from the similar, but not quite same, page: http://bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/sauropods/biganims.html

Even that page lacks the images you show. Do you have any further information on the origins of this post?

[chopperman]

I’d think that maybe the earth may have been spinning faster.

[Swordmaker]

I started with the Kronia page but found a later more complete version on several other sites. I added the graphics from some of those sites and others to provide some visual information. For example, the elephant skeleton graphic no longer linked in the original sites so I Googled one. The teratorn pictures are helpful for people who have never heard of them.

[Swordmaker]

Re: load of BS

Then you explain how these huge animals stood up and walked around under one G gravity. How did they support a 40,000 Lb neck and pump blood up to an admittedly small brain fourty feet from the heart? How does a 200 Lb Eagle fly with its 27’ wingspan and why can’t modern birds do it in our 1G gravity? These are serious questions that need answers not dismissal as BS.

[ThePythonicCow]

how the gravitational force of a planet of basically constant mass changes over time

Perhaps the earth was rotating faster, which it would have if it was smaller -- same mass, but smaller diameter. Then the centrifugal force would have partially counteracted gravity.

Somewhere, I saw once an interesting article that further explained the moon's creation as matter flying off an earth spinning too fast to hold together, but I can't find a link to that right now.

I did find however a very interesting YouTube link http://www.youtube.com/v/VjgidAICoQI, in a blog entry at http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/continental-drift-is-wrong/.

If you watch this video, you will see a clear presentation of how the earth's continental plates all fit together, covering the -entire- surface. Then over the last 65 million years the earth expands, spreading apart the plates apart, growing young oceans in the new expanse.

[ThePythonicCow]

Thanks - that's what I was guessing you did to create this page - makes sense.

[ovrtaxt]

Gravity is one issue, the amount of oxygen in the air is another. The lungs of these animals is nowhere near a workable dimension in order to feed such a large muscle mass. The only explanation is that there was simply more oxygen then, in the same volume of air.

[ThePythonicCow]

Aha - here's an article explaining the other piece of this, how the moon flew off the rapidly spinning earth 65 million years ago. Prior to then, the earth had become quite oblate, bulging at the equator, with a single plate covering its entire surface, but with the equatorial belt as dry land, and the water (oceans) toward the poles.

See further http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/WHAT_REALLY_KILLED_THE_DINOSAURS.html.

The weight of the giant dinosaurs just before that cataclismic event would have approached zero.

[samtheman]

Smaller diameter would mean stronger gravity, not weaker.

As for the length of the earth day, I think that has been increasing, due to tidal friction, but at a much slower rate than would significantly effect the net gravitational force 65 million years ago.

As for the moon, I think it’s pretty well established that it was created 4 billion years ago when another planet collided with and merged with our own, blowing off the lunar chunk in the process.

I haven’t looked at your links yet, and I will. But the posted article here seems to me not real science but some kind of Däniken type silliness.

[samtheman]

24 Hours of Chaos: The Day The Moon Was Made

[ThePythonicCow]

Smaller diameter means stronger gravity, but faster spinning, hence more centrifugal force, hence less weight.

[samtheman]

'Mild' collision spawned Earth's moon

[samtheman]

I just looked at your FR homepage. Very interesting. You are quite the pythonic person.

:)

[ThePythonicCow]

That "24 Hours of Chaos" link is to a very different theory than the one I'm describing. That one is a collision theory. What I'm suggesting is a rapidly spinning earth, smaller in diameter, spinning so fast at 65 million years ago that part of the equatorial bulge flies off, and the remaining crust, which had been a single piece (under water except around the equatorial bulge) is spread over the expanding surface of a growing planet, creating the oceans.

It's not a traditional Pandea theory, which has the earth size holding constant, and the continents sliding about, beginning with one connected super-continent. Rather it's more like a slowly exploding egg theory.

Prior to the cataclism at 65 million years, all surface life on the planet would have been on the connected, raised bulge around the equator, resulting in world wide uniformity of land plants and animals. As it got close to 65 million years ago, and the earth spinned faster and faster, the centrifugal force would have counteracted the gravitational attraction of masses, allowing for increasingly large beasts, up to incredibly large dinosaurs shortly before 65 million years ago.