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Posted: |
Mar 29, 2017 - 5:09 AM
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By: |
Metryq
(Member)
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ZapBrannigan wrote: Further down on the Quora page, someone claims that dinosaurs don't cross the Square-cubed line, that they were just near the theoretical limit. But how can we know that?
I've read many excuses for this, including the completely ad hoc claim that dinosaurs had different, more efficient muscles than animals today. That idea is completely unfounded by DNA data (the idea that what is in the genes of animals today is an archive of what came before). And now Mary Schweitzer has opened a new can of worms by finding "dinosaur meat" in "fossil" remains:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Higby_Schweitzer
It becomes an infinite regression of convoluted explanations to maintain the phenomenon. As Zap stated, how can we begin to unravel the problems if specialists won't even admit they exist? I've heard many creative solutions to the dinosaur size problem from the Earth's atmosphere once being dense enough (and thus offering buoyancy) to support dinos, to possible ways Earth's gravity might have changed—a very big problem, depending on how wedded one is to a given model of gravity. There is also the idea that Earth was once much closer to some other body that reduced gravity on the side (or pole) facing the other body.
How the dinosaurs died is also a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilMFE-iVVak
Mastadge wrote: Um, because they existed?
That fact wasn't being contested. Zap was pointing out a conflict in our understanding of dinosaurs. We know the theoretical limit of creatures today. Human power lifters and elephants approach that limit (based on cube-square), but none have been found to exceed that. Ergo, the unspoken assumption that Earth has been largely the same throughout its history must be wrong. In what way, or ways, then, has it changed so that super-duper-mega-sized creatures can no longer exist? There were also pterosaurs far in excess of the largest flying creatures today.
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The Hallow Earth theory or concept is as dated and now as hokey as the idea of a plateau in the South American Amazon jungle having live dinosaurs upon it. Really can't believe the makers of KONG: SKULL ISLAND dug that old chestnut up, but then the makers of PACIFIC RIM didn't come up with an idea much better. It's all very silly for me, but I'm sure that the kids today seeing these movies will have found nostalgic regard for them thirty years hence.
I was kidding! I don't really believe the movie's Hollow Earth gimmick. Imaginary dangers are the best kind. Also, if we can suspend disbelief for transporters and warp drive, we can do the same for a monster movie.
And may I say, this new KONG is a very good film.
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I've always been foxed by the A/V ratios of dinosaurs. It's not just their structural size, but their capacity to move at speed given the gravity and atmospheric restrictions. You can't get round that just by saying they had bigger muscles. For a human to flap like a bird and fly, he'd need a breastbone protruding about three feet in front of his chest to enable the requisite muscle volume and connections. Yet these giant buggers could race (or plod) at sizeable speed with bodies apparently comparatively proportionate to today's species.
I'm sure folk have momentarily fantasized that some sort of expansion in the terrain over aeons has concretised the fossil imprints to be expanded and bigger than they were, but that wouldn't fit the facts.
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Maybe their bellies were full of helium and they were lighter than air. I think that was the explanation for the existence of dragons. 
