Why it was possible for dinosaurs to exist ?

[Dlouro]

The biggest land animal today is the elephant. To walk around it got those legs like columns to support the massive weight. How it was possible for animals sometimes 5 times bigger than a elephant to stand and walk?

For me something is very wrong about it. I allready asked experts in conferences and they simple ignore me.

I have only 2 explanations . Or the gravity was smaller than today or the flesh and bones were lighter.

When we see those slender animals with, sometimes, legs like land birds it is difficult to imagine them running around in our Earth today. The some applies to the flying pterodactyls when compared to the condor.

Any ideas?

[John Cuthber]

Really big bones

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/93e7ed406f1c970dfb3597714282f2cb5464f974/0_0_1632_2447/master/1632.jpg?w=620&q=20&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&dpr=2&s=2d089a1aed0450dbeef89701ae9a2557

[ajb]

Not my field at all ... but various people have worked on the mechanics of animal motion. You should see what the literature says on the subject - for sure a change in gravity is ruled out.

 

See if you can find Robert McNeill Alexander, Dynamics of Dinosaurs and other Extinct Giants, Columbia University Press, 1989.

[Dlouro]

Hello John

Yes they are really big bones but to move those bones around they must had a massive weigth.

And the body's they had suggest that they could jump also. Did you ever heard of a jumping elephant ?

[John Cuthber]

Relatively speaking an elephant's legs are thin.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/74554875@N03/6979367643

Edited July 17, 2016 by John Cuthber

[ajb]

Hunt down the book I suggest... otherwise you are just arguing from ignorance. (Not that I am sure what you are heading towards here)

[Dlouro]

Thank you AJB . I allready check the book in amazon and I will buy it.

For your information I live near this place and we almost can feel a dinosaur family walking around with the youngest running and playing.

 

http://www.pegadasdedinossaurios.org/html/monumento_uk.htm

[Phi for All]

Apatosaurus seems to be denser in bone structure in the legs, becoming lighter in the mid-skeleton, and eventually ending with vertebrae from tail to neck that have air sacs in them to make them lighter. So it looks more like a combination of denser and lighter bones is closer to an answer. We use techniques like this to make materials and objects stronger, more flexible, and able to withstand more pressure.

 

This seems like an attempt at skepticism that got stopped at incredulity.

[Dlouro]

This is not an attempt of skepticism. You understand me wrong. It was possible in the past that earth was smaller and with less gravity, also i still doubt that in a engineering point of view the dinosaurs could walk today in our planet with the current conditions. I just want to understand how it was possible for those big animals to survive in the past and I include also the big mammals. I am an engineer by formation and I am just asking for answers by the experts in the field. It is strange that when someone asks something that for him it's not so obvious the answer is almost always a little bit rude.

Forgive me for thinking.

[John Cuthber]

This

" also i still doubt that in a engineering point of view the dinosaurs could walk today in our planet with the current conditions." reminds me of the claim that aeronautical engineering says that bumble bees can't fly.

[Strange]

It was possible in the past that earth was smaller and with less gravity

Is it? Really?

[Dlouro]

I never heard a aeronautical engineer say such thing. I heard it from the creationists and lunatics. Also if they believed that they never made aeroplanes in the first place.

[studiot]

There have been too many acrimonious threads, but let me observe that this is not one of them so far.

 

I am not that interested in biological history but I do remember a recent BBC series about dinosaurs where they also published some very interesting material.

This was about the 'engineering' of the dinosaurs.

Essentially they used CGI techniques to create 'film' of the time, and the studies they did to try to work out the mechanics of dinosaur bodies and locomotion was highly interesting.

Several preciously unknown matters were discovered during this.

Since there is no geological evidence that our Earth has had substantially different radii or gravity since it coalesced the work was done using modern day values.

 

I cannot remember the title, perhaps another can help here?

 

As an engineer you may be interested in readingthis book by Steven Vogel

 

Cats Paws and Catapaults

 

The author compares human and nature's solutions to various engineering challenges.

 

This is not about the dinosaurs directly, but illuminating all the same.

Edited July 17, 2016 by studiot

[Dlouro]

To Strange. It is of course. All the theories of the formation of the solar system say that.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System

Studiot . I will try to find about that BBC serie. Thank you.

[studiot]

 

Studiot . I will try to find about that BBC serie. Thank you

 

I think it was this series, you want the 'making of' bit.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en-GB&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=bbc+walking+with+the+dinosaurs&gbv=2&oq=BBC+the+dinosaurs&gs_l=heirloom-hp.1.0.0i7i30l10.1110.9625.0.14422.17.13.0.4.4.0.203.1719.1j10j1.12.0....0...1ac.1.34.heirloom-hp..1.16.1875.k85sPJZYSlI

 

BTW the book I mentioned has quite about about flight and the difference between bees, hummingbirds and human aircraft.

Also water craft and water insects.

[Dlouro]

Thank you studiot. I will search for the book . I already found the series. You helped a lot.

[Phi for All]

This is not an attempt of skepticism. You understand me wrong. It was possible in the past that earth was smaller and with less gravity, also i still doubt that in a engineering point of view the dinosaurs could walk today in our planet with the current conditions. I just want to understand how it was possible for those big animals to survive in the past and I include also the big mammals. I am an engineer by formation and I am just asking for answers by the experts in the field. It is strange that when someone asks something that for him it's not so obvious the answer is almost always a little bit rude.

Forgive me for thinking.

 

Often we start out questioning things like how dinosaurs could walk if they were so big, and that's a good thing, but we don't take our curiosity far enough. Being skeptical is good, as long as you follow up on it with learning, which you're doing here. I wasn't trying to be rude with my comment. I was pointing out that incredulity ("I can't believe something so big could stand up!") alone isn't enough.

 

I'm very sorry you focused on the last part of my post and ignored the first part, which at least tried to answer your question here in the thread.

[Dlouro]

Sorry Phi for all.

As you know it's difficult to understand the meaning of words when we are not talking in person.

Forgive me for any disrespect. Also my native language is not english and sometimes we ment another thing.

[John Cuthber]

I never heard a aeronautical engineer say such thing. I heard it from the creationists and lunatics. Also if they believed that they never made aeroplanes in the first place.

Yuu may not have heard; but that's down to your lack of research,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee#Misconception_about_flight

Well, you say it's lunacy to claim that bees can't fly- and you are right. Then you make the essentially similar claim that dinosaurs couldn't walk.

What should I deduce from that?

 

The issue was, of course nothing to do with bees- the problem was with the engineering model.

They recognised this.

Do you?

Edited July 18, 2016 by John Cuthber

[Strange]

To Strange. It is of course. All the theories of the formation of the solar system say that.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System

 

 

You will need to be more specific. An article about the formation of the solar system does not seem very relevant to the question of the Earth changing size since the dinosaurs. So unless you have some actual evidence, I think we can assume it is nonsense.

[michel123456]

At my knowledge there is also theory that says the atmosphere was different at the time, and also another study that says the largest dinosaurs where always in water (like today's hippopotamus). But I don't know what is gibberish in those and what is not.

 

--------------

To speak frankly what I find disturbing is not the gigantism of dinosaurs. It is the gigantism of everything: plants, insects, etc. But again some other info over the web say it is wrong because small animals existed also. at the end I say I don't know. Material for others.

Edited July 18, 2016 by michel123456

[Phi for All]

To speak frankly what I find disturbing is not the gigantism of dinosaurs. It is the gigantism of everything: plants, insects, etc. But again some other info over the web say it is wrong because small animals existed also. at the end I say I don't know. Material for others.

 

It wasn't everything, as you point out. There was a lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which made things warmer and helped fuel massive plant growth as well, but not everything became larger because of it. Some species don't benefit from getting bigger. Humans are a good example (in modern times). There's only so much weight you can put on our spines, since they were designed to be horizontal before we stood up to run faster and free our hands.

 

As for the "engineering" aspects of giantism, four dense vertical columns supporting a flexible, lighter bridge-like structure of horizontal vertebrae, balanced by long neck and tail is a very successful design. It could be that the largest spent most of their time in water, venturing out for necessary trips like a hippo, but I'm not sure it was required.

[Moontanman]

The modern consensus on dinosaurs is that even the large sauropods were strictly land dwellers. They had hollow bones and air sacs and a respiratory system analogous to modern birds. To some extent their large size was fundamental to eating plants. Thier huge stomachs were fermentation vats and they probably ate constantly.

 

I would like to know how the earth got to it's size we see today if it was significantly smaller during the reign of the dinosaurs.

 

The large insects that were mentioned did not live during the time of the dinosaurs but lived in the carboniferous period when the air contained more than 30% oxygen. When the oxygen levels fell the large insects died out.

 

Mammals and dinosaurs developed at about the same time but dinosaurs out competed the mammals and rule the earth for something like 170 million years. Mammals were suppressed by the superior dinosaurs..

[Dlouro]

Yuu may not have heard; but that's down to your lack of research,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee#Misconception_about_flight

Well, you say it's lunacy to claim that bees can't fly- and you are right. Then you make the essentially similar claim that dinosaurs couldn't walk.

What should I deduce from that?

The issue was, of course nothing to do with bees- the problem was with the engineering model.

They recognised this.

Do you?

The article in Wikipedia says that I am right. No aeronautical engineer said that.

Also I never said that dinosaurs couldn't walk. What I said was that I doubt that they could walk today with the current conditions in our planet.

I know that earth was smaller, the atmosphere was diferent, the rotation period was faster, the geography was mainly one large continent, the moon was closer, maybe all those diferent conditions together had some influence on the size of all life in our planet.

What I can see watching the footprints near my house and the skeletons in our museums is that dinosaurs were fast and energetic.

Still trying to find the engineering model.

The footprints near my place clearly show a big sauropod walking in a straight line and two small ones running around but following the big one like two puppies playing around their mother. They had to move fast.

The site is called "Pedreira do Galinha" ironical meaning Quarry of Chicken. So , you see, dinosaurs and flyless birds.

The link is below.

 

http://www.pegadasdedinossaurios.org/html/monumento_uk.htm

[Moontanman]

The article in Wikipedia says that I am right. No aeronautical engineer said that.

Also I never said that dinosaurs couldn't walk. What I said was that I doubt that they could walk today with the current conditions in our planet.

I know that earth was smaller, the atmosphere was diferent, the rotation period was faster, the geography was mainly one large continent, the moon was closer, maybe all those diferent conditions together had some influence on the size of all life in our planet.

What I can see watching the footprints near my house and the skeletons in our museums is that dinosaurs were fast and energetic.

Still trying to find the engineering model.

 

 

I think you need to show your evidence that the earth was smaller, the rest of what you assert about the earth and moon is only marginally true. The Earth and life existed for hundreds of millions of years before there were dinosaurs an the continents have clumped together and spread about more than once... .

 

When you think of dinosaurs don't think large lizards, think birds, birds are to dinosaurs what bats are to mammals.

 

If you really think bees can't fly I would suggest stirring up a bumble bee nest and watch them crawl after you...

Edited July 19, 2016 by Moontanman