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Science

World's Biggest Dinosaur Constructed 150

Posted by Hemos from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come dept.
Corey Sweeney writes: "The world's largest dinosaur skeleton, a seismosaur, was constructed in Bynum, Mont. this week. It's over 135 feet long and 22 feet high, and some have estimated that the seismosaurous could have weighed up to 150 tons. Disputes over how the seismosaur could have supported its own ponderous weight is the source of "interesting" theories of dinosaur evolution. "
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World's biggest dinosaur constructed

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  • Re:I'm curious.. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah right...

    And similar to a cartoon I saw, the dinosaurs were kept bouyant by pockets of hydrogen. Them dinos were huge H2 blimps. Fire breathing too when they burped :).

    Pity the ones that exploded. But of course there's no evidence of burnt dino bones eh? Coz just imagine lightning striking one of these dinos (blam!).

    Seriously tho, lightning should be a nasty problem when you get that huge and hold your head up too high.

    1) You're tall
    2) You've got a LOT of body area
    3) If you're that big and lightning strikes somewhere near, the potential drop between your tail and your head is going to be uncomfortable- so better keep both OFF the ground at all times.
    4) Where can you go to escape?

    I guess they had to live in low lightning areas huh ;).

    Link.

  • Maybe air was denser. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Then more of the dinosaur's weight etc could be supported by the atmosphere.

    But is there anything that would indicate what the density of the atmosphere was? Same?

    I find it really amazing those animals could be so huge and _move_ around _on_land_. I keep wondering that maybe they had something that we didn't - trace rare earth elements etc. And then something changed and poof.

    Heh, maybe they ran on cold fusion :). Then one they the laws changed _slightly_ ;).

    Cheerio,

    Link.
  • The article is actually quite interesting.

    Perhaps, but it's bunk. If you read about chimpanzees, you'll find that they have amazing strength compared to humans (somewhere around 7 times as strong), despite being smaller than average adult male humans. Using humanity -- even a powerlifter -- as the basis for judging what muscle can do is pretty silly.

    A better basis for the limit on muscle strength would be the strength of a crocodile jaw, particularly given that crocs have changed little since the end of the Cretaceous (65 million years ago). Crocs can exert up to 3000 psi of pressure with their jaws. Not sure how we can translate that to useful stats for measuring potential body size though.

    Any event that would cause significant changes in the Earth's gravity would have enormous effects on the surface. Vague evidence of a meteroid impact in the Yucatan area wouldn't be nearly enough. You would expect major disturbances in the Earth's orbit -- probably into an extreme elliptical shape that would create conditions too extreme for life to continue to exist.
  • Contrary to popular belief (like anything else that's true), the Tyrannosaurus Rex was not the mighty hunter he is portrayed as.

    More likely, he was a thief.

    Sure, prey may run fast and need speed -- when it's alive. However, once those teeny velociraptors kill off their prey, it's lying on the ground motionless. And if it's a good-sized kill, they aren't going to be moving that body. So instead of catching the prey itself, the T-rex just moves in on the dead body, and the velociraptors scatter.

    Lions are pretty similar, despite their reputation. Typically we think of the hyenas trying to steal bits from the lion's kill, but really it's generally the reverse. The hyenas make the kill, then the lions move in and take most of it from them. It's the protection racket of the Serengeti, with manes instead of spats.
  • Wasn't T-Rex gone before raptors came to be?

    No, they both were from the late Cretaceous. Their habitats seem to be somewhat different, however, and thus they may not have interacted. Fossil records are far from complete, however. T-rex apparently lasted up to the great dinosaur extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

    "Jurassic Park" had mostly Cretaceous-period dinosaurs, and thus was mis-named.
  • Look! It's a bird, it's a plane, it's sarcasm flying right over your head!
  • My recall is from TV but I don't know if it was animated or acted.

    Diamond mines explain the tendency of dragons to collect huge treasures. Are diamonds affected by acids?
    __
  • I remember about some science+fantasy story with dragons.

    They ate calchareous (sp?) rocks that when mixed with the stomach acid produced hydrogen. The H enabled them to fly, the wings were for control, not substentation. When they had an excess of hydrogen, they could throw flames to burn it.

    I don't know how plausible it is, but it suspended my disbelief.
    __
  • Actually, it is the other way around. the moon prevents the earth from wobbling. According to computer models if the moon did not exist the earth's axis could wobble up to a 45 degree angle ro it's current angle, cuasing terribly harsh seasons that would make life extremely diifcult on earth. Throw the moon into the mix and the earth's axis does not deviate more than 10 degrees(-ish). So, you can thank the moon for your existence. Dastardly P.S. I mentionthis from memory the exact axis deviation may be off, but I assume you get the idea.

  • I'm surprised that this didn't come up before (at least I can't find it mentioned anywhere). The Field Museum, Chicago, unveiled Sue back on May 17th. Sue is the largest, most complete T.rex specimen known to exist.

    Full details and additional information can be found at http://www.fieldmuseum.org/sue/ [fieldmuseum.org]

  • People, have you ever taken an elementary physics class? Actually, this would only partially help. Okay, have any of you taken an elementary Geophysics class?

    A while back, a slashdot poll asked whether you would taller or short at the north pole than at the equator. The physics was relatively poor although one insightful poster asked about the effect of the well know process known as "shrinkage". This guy obviously watched Seinfeld.

    The magnitude of gravity at the earth's surface is determined by the volume integrated mass distribution of the earth. There are local variations in gravity (g) but the main contribution is determined by stuff deep within the earth. Think Gauss's Law.

    The one thing that you should always do is to perform a first-order, back of the envelope series of calculations. Then ask if it makes sense. Suppose g dropped by 10%. The dino would still be very heavy. 20%? Still heavy. 20% reduction in the mass of the earth (or in the size of the earth)? Pretty major change in the earth.

    The earth radius is approximately 6371 km. The most dense masses are not at the surface. To the first order, density increase linearly with respect to depth from the surface down to the core (depth of about 2700 km). Ph.D. geophysics qualifying exam question: What is the first order variation in g as a function of depth thru the earth? Get it right, then I will give you one of my karma whore points.

    Atmospheric density variations is more interesting. But this means serious amount of higher density material (water vapor?) in the atmosphere.

  • located in Finland :)

    *prepares to be moderated down for making a non MS joke*
  • Except the article points out there is no evidence it did so, and quite a lot of evidence it didn't.

    -David T. C.

  • It comes from the HCl used to 'digest' the limestone. The Cl likes the Ca (Calcium) lots better than the H, and gloms onto it, leaving the H's free to combine to make H2.

    Kind of a silly and amusing premise. :-)

  • Sadly, reviewing the chemistry database [webelements.com], I see this reaction for Calcium Carbonate (limestone) and HCl (hydrochloric acid):
    CaCO3 + 2HCl -> CaCl2 + H2O + CO2

    So, no resulting hydrogen, just water and CO2. Completely impossible premise unless the dragon's digestive track had a good way of taking care of the CO3 (carbonate) part of Calcium Carbonate.

  • Check out the rest of the 'Interesting Theories' site, www.bearfabrique.org [bearfabrique.org].

    Good for a few snickers, several belly-laughs and more than the USRDA of disbelieving head-shakes. It makes a strong case for Prozac and Lithium.

  • Burns: Smithers, release the robotic Richard Simmons.

  • The mystery goes away when you realize that dinos' bones keep growing after they die. And they can grow a lot in 65 million years.

    In reality, dinosaurs ware nano-scale scavangers, fiercely struggling for supremacy atop small piles of proto-mammalian feces. Winner take all, and all that.

    --
  • I just went to a lecture by Paul Sereno on his finds in Africa. The new sauropod he discovered he has named Jobharia, since the locals kept finding the bones in the desert and refered to them as Jobhar bones, with Jobhar being the local corruption of the Arabic word for giant.

    They evidently did believe that the disarticulated bones they were finding were the bones of giants, which was of course, correct.

    What's really sad is that Sereno had to win the celebrity challenge in the Chicago Marathon to raise the funds to clean and mount the skeletons.

  • The Gravity Guy is a kook. He reminds me of myself when someone tells me theres a problem with my software. I say "That can't happen."

    In point of fact, it did happen. The bones are there. The creatures lived. There is no evidence that indicates gravity has changed over a period of weeks, years, decades or even Ions. Certainly it can be said that the amount of space junk falling on the Earth has probably caused a marginal increase in Gravity over the past 200 million years.

    Think about it though. As time went by the Dinosaurs got bigger not smaller.

    There isn't any use throwing a bunch of math based on a weight lifter from Russia at the problem either. Nature has done some incredibly complicated things over time and Gravity Guys smallish understanding of Jurasic Physics and Physiology really can't compare or compete.

    Gravity Guy has forgotten the number one rule of assumptions:

    KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid!!!

  • Re:Pern (Score:1)

    by / ( 33804 )
    The first in Anne McCaffrey's series [swcp.com] was published in 1968. As you note, Flight of the Dragons [imdb.com] is from 1982. Sounds like a ripoff.
  • A useful link announcing the research (and with a cool animation =8-o )

    http://www.news.corn ell.edu/releases/March00/APS_Wang.hrs.html [cornell.edu]
  • In response to:
    I suppose I should clarify one thing. Contrary to what that evolution article claims, the Elephant is not the largest creature on earth. Think whales. How do they support their weight? They live in water.
    Except that the author explicitly stated that there is no evidence that they did live in the water, and there is significant evidence that they lived outside of the water (ie, wear marks on the teeth indicate a diet consisting of land-based plants, as opposed to soft water plants).
  • One theory stats that there was a much higher percentage of O2 in the air millions of years ago. Its one of the theorys about why the mammals won out over the reptiles was the (no disproved?) more efficent heart.
  • Wasn't T-Rex gone before raptors came to be? That really bugged me about JP, they had all these species that (mostly?) never coexisted, from vastly different times, and different parts of the world too.
  • The reason that models say that bees shouldn't fly is basically that we haven't been able to model a lift surface (wings) that aren't ridgid. Bees wings flex as the flap. Presumably a sufficiently accurate model would show us that they can fly (since they actually do).
  • NO! It's the dogs! The dogs!

    What are you going to do? Send out the DOGS! Huh? Or the BEES!? Or the DOGS who BARK and SHOOT BEES AT YOU! That's how BEE's fly, damnit, that's how BEE'S FLY! THE DOGS!

    Oh no!

    (If you don't get it, you've missed and episode of the Simpsons.)


  • Glad you couldn't tell!!!!!

    The Slack is passed back!

    Daala



  • Cheers for that!

    And as you can tell I can be a Christian and a scientist as well as a cabbage and a hippo!

    Daala
  • In answer to your question in there was another planet yes gravity would be increased here on Earth but the "gravitational pull\push" would only be affected marginally here.

    Not being an Astrophysicist I can conclude that this could not be the only reason that gravity was more\less. Take for example the alignments of planets in our solar system like the interesting "Revelations-like" astronomical conjunction in May. Even though some planets where closer to Earth they did not have a combination effect on gravity

    Sorry it's late for me sorry if the last statement sounds full of shit. Maybe an astrophysicist can clean up my drivel!!

    Peace

    Daala
  • Or in your case your brain
  • "the worst pseudoscientific trickery that has ever been perpetrated on the citizens of God's green Earth" - I actually think the pseudo-Creationist nonsense you are sprouting surely takes the cake.

    How can you go from talking about "And it was simple math that did it" - to saying that the Earth is 6000 years old. By the way your claims are less scientifically valid than DINOSAURS.

    You sir are a complete moron and are probably rank amongst the geniuses that are trying to ban evolution from school education. Why not argue about the contencious issues of proper science - I too have problems with modern paeleontology and archaeology but they are scientific concerns. I don't need to talk about men that lived for 900 years and Bishop Usher's stupid predictions, floods and 7 day creations.

    Perhaps you can do yourself a real favour go back and read the BIBLE in Hebrew and check out Kabbalah research you will see that most of your stories are just that. The BIBLE is alot more clever than morons such as yourself.

    And yes I am a Christian and also a scientist but one that will not be associated with morons such as yourself and would rather look at God's amazing and unexplainable Universe using the brains and intelligence that he gave us!!

    Shalom

    Daala

    Shit you cretinists aren't even Dinosaurs you should be fucking extinct!!
  • Dude, centripetal acceleration is radially outwards; if the earth was spinning faster, the dinosaurs would have weighed less. Thus, the asteroid would have had to _slow down_ the earth.
  • If Terra had higher angular momentum, wouldn't the planet as a whole expand a little? Whether its a significant amount or not is another matter. :)

    I could see Terra having a much higher L, meaning there would be an added force to keep the plates closer to the Equator, thus giving sauropods the optimal location for the effects of gravity reduction. (As far as land masses go.)

    Then one day, wham! An asteroid hits at an angle such that it not only blocks out the sun for a bit but it hits at an angle that actually reduces L enough that the effects of gravity are felt even more.

    -Vel
  • Well, you have Metric tons, short tons, long tons and plain 'ol tons. Several maintain uniformity of measurement standard, a few do not.

    Pick one and try again. *G*
  • This was not funny. In fact, I hit myself in the head, repeatedly, with the handle of a #2 Phillips just after posting it. I was also heard to murmur something about pulling a Bobbsey Twins (the porno, not the childrens book) on the miscreant Compaq 5100 with said screwdriver, but that was the indoubatably the Stoli talking..

    Where was I?? Oh, yeah. Get back on the cluetrain, Jimmy boy, and mix yourself another while you're at it..

    That was not funny.
  • Obviously, the artificial intelligence programmed some bones into the Matrix for us to find, without taking into account the strength/size problem. It realized we would need some kind of "roots" as a basis for understanding the world that has been pulled over our eyes. It's just more proof that something is wrong with our world.
  • AC, PLEASE warn people when you drop spoilers!!!!! You've destroyed the core mystery of the first book, Inherit the Stars. The theme of that book is how science tests, hypothesizes, and argues (not to say fights) its way to truth, even when it involves a monumental rethinking of assumptions (for example, what you've casually spilled here). Anyone you've pointed to these books who hadn't read ITS before will now find it really deflated (the subsequent books should still work, though). Anyway, you have the facts wrong (the Earth has always been in its present orbit in the Giant's books).
  • Perhaps the ancient atmosphere had more O2 that was burned up in the asteroid impact. More O2 might have lead to more available chemical energy to the muscles. At the very least it would explain the larger size of ancient insects. The size of an insect is partly limited by their ability to get O2 to the rest of their bodies without the benefit of lungs.
  • The 'interesting theories' guy, that is. Well, a moron or a liar. I vote the latter. Scale a human to a dinosaur and, yes, you won't be able to stand. Likewise, make a human weigh as much as an elephant, and he won't be able to stand. Elephants aren't built like humans, and neither are sauropods. Without going into too much detail, the issue is the cross-sectional width of the muscle. The legs of an elephant, or a sauropod, are VERY THICK -- as thick as the skull of Senator Exon, at the very least. By deliberately ignoring structure, and focusing solely on weight, the author of the article treads perilously close to out-and-out fraud. I'm not a biologist -- three semesters of biochem convinced me my future was in the liberal arts -- but lowered gravity is not necessary to explain dinosaurs. (Also, we know NOTHING of the biochemistry of the muscle tissue itself -- it could have evolved very interesting internal structures. We won't know until we find one of those bronto-sucking mosquitos they used in J. Park.)
  • Untill i read the bit about the skeleton i thought the story might be about constructing a giant software corporation that creates an unnatural dependence on its products through unfair practices, only to later realise the truth that they are operating in a services based industry and they are obsolete.. dinosours.
  • The faster spin I was referring to was only in terms of a few hours per day; it was supposed to have been less than 16 hours from sunrise to sunset, but that's hardly enough to cause anything (other than excess gas molecules of oxygen & helium) to be liberated from the planet's gravity.

    Part of the Great Comet theory does mention the slowdown of rotation as an effect, and the Earth's "wobble" adjustment accounts for this as well.
  • Guys, come on. It's a joke. You know, as in "funny ha ha" (not "funny ho ho").

    Boy, some people sure are defensive around here.

    Mark

  • About the whole increase in gravity thing, isn't it theorized that the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter used to be a planet? If there used to be a planet there wouldn't gravity have been greater on earth?

    No. The effect would be imperceptible, and that's being generous.

    I've just assumed that the gravity guy is a kook. If the problems your theory creates are much, much worse than the problems it solves, that could be a sign that you're grasping at straws.

  • OK, it is late, but I will attempt to make sense of it all.... tomorrow... but till then... Wouldn't the bigger 'gliders' benefit from lightened gravity since they would not actually be attempting to create force to lift off the ground? It's late, so this will probably be obvious tomorrow when I reevaluate the article :-) (I also did not see the Nova episode mentioned so I am probably shooting blank here)
  • The Brontosaurus was a mistake... it was an Apatosaurus body with a Brachiosaurus head, IIRC.
    -----
  • That 'Interesting Theory' guy should do his research. There's no such thing as a Brontosaur.
    -----
  • :P
    *** SIGNATURE WANTED. BIG REWARD. It's name is "Bubba"
  • "It's also known that the Cyclops legend was inspired by elephant skulls found in caves (possibly Hannibal's elephants!) wherein the nasal opening looks like a large single eye socket."

    Absolutely correct about the probable origin of the myth, but since the Cyclopes were mentioned in the Illiad (circa 900bc) the chances of their being Hannibal Barca's (crossed the Alps in 218bc) elephants is not likely.

  • Or even worse, bad pr0n movies:

    COCKZILLA: Size Matters.

    "Plot:" Famed paleontolgist and millionware playboy Richard Rod Johnson tracks the famed Godzilla creature to a small Pacific island, where he finds instead a race of topless maidens ready to fuck and suck. Running time: 120 minutes.

    Should be even better than "Jurassic Prick!"

    ---------///----------
    This post is not redundant, please don't moderate it as such. I repeat, this post is not redundant.

  • Re:Jurassic Park (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Fossil records don't contain movies :).

    Actually, they do, in a way. Thanks to preserved footprints, we can calculate the speed at which animals were moving.

  • At one time, the world was flat,

    Are you sure? I know that the size of the earth was calculated in 200bc, and they came within the margin of error of their insterments. That is within a few miles. It is a popular myth that everyone thought the world was flat, and perhaps most people did in the 1400s. the king of Portigal wasn't fooled by Columbus, since the kind knew the size of the world to be about 4 times was Columbus claimed. the king of spain knew the same thing, but his wife got involved and being a good husband (Was he good otherwise? For all I knew the preacher had given a sermen on not beating your wife the day before and he was feeling a little repentant) he sent some ships that were ready to be retired and some prisoners with this columbus fellow to make his wife happy and get all out of the way. Now a days the rish do similear things for a tax write off.

  • It's known that this exact bones->legends progression happened with the mammoths. It's also known that the Cyclops legend was inspired by elephant skulls found in caves (possibly Hannibal's elephants!) wherein the nasal opening looks like a large single eye socket. So it's possible that monster legends could descend from ancient bones.

    Of course, for our dragon legend to be started from dinosaur bones, I'm guessing it would have had to be a mostly articulated skeleton, and in order to accommodate the "wings" our mythical dragons seem to always have, maybe it was a plesiosaur or mosasaur or other aquatic beastie whose huge front flippers looked to an ancient like wings. If the skeleton were not articulated, they'd find the giant bones and think of giant people, as seemed to happen all too often, and if it were articulated but of something like a t-rex, the shape of our modern dragon would be very different.
  • You're probably just trolling, but what the hey.

    If anyone is mounting attacks on God, it's you, my friend. Creationism went out of fashion in the late 1800s as CHRISTIANS, seeking to understand how God works, went out and did some digging and pretty much unilaterally decided Genesis was a parable and that life DID evolve in a gradual process over a very long time. And indeed, which is the greater glory: an unbelievably complex world billions of years old, where entire PHYLA have come and gone, all spawned from a single explosion where God infused the rules of the universe into a point of matter and let it do its thing, or just some built-all-at-once artifice a mere 6000 years old with one ten-thousandth the biological diversity? God's supposed to be this great builder, and you've just insulted His greatest masterpiece by claiming it only took him six days and it was built "last week" on the cosmic clock.

    Anyway. There's a tunnel through a hillside near here, in central Indiana, where fossils (not dinosaurs, just invertebrates - brachiopods, molluscs, crinoids) are literally falling out of the walls. These are not plaster, nor are they carved stone - they are made of a different, harder mineral composition than the surrounding rock, they go all the way back into the rock (the whole hill is full of fossils, as are the nearby hills) and there is definitely NO way that a human forger could insert fakes into that hillside for you or me to find. This is just a site I know of PERSONALLY, where I have held fossils of oceangoing creatures from 230 million years ago, many of which simply don't exist today, and where I can personally see that we have certain species at the bottom of the tunnel and different species at the top. (And they're not hydrodynamically sorted either, there is no size trend.)

    Creationism came back into fashion, not because of any scientific discovery or lack thereof, but because people like you needed some new tactic to "prove" to yourself and to the world that the Bible is right and science is wrong. You're saying so in your own words: you connect evolution with liberals, socialists, non-Christians, and any other unsavory things you can think of. You have NO evidence to support your claim that dinosaur fossils are frauds - in fact I think there's at least 100 Slashdotters who will volunteer to DRIVE you to sites where vertebrate fossils are literally falling out of the walls, and show you up close that they are not fakes. But the basis for your conclusion isn't scientific fact - the basis for your conclusion is that people who believe in evolution are People You Don't Like.

    can't have 65 million year-old fossils on a 6,000 year-old Earth!

    That's what we've been saying all along. But, um, geologists began to notice the earth was way older than 6000 years BEFORE Darwin and his naughty little book, so I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. Other than the fact that you want the world to just straighten up and meet your ideal, and you don't care what facts you have to ignore or distort to get there, huh? You have the audacity to claim evolution is nonsense and that dinosaur bones are frauds, yet your 'divine' authority is a book written down by HUMANS and your 'science' is nothing but a parroting of the standard ultraconservative party line - you can't even make up your OWN mind about who you hate, you have to let Rush Limbaugh tell you!

    I also note that some of your Creationist brethren DO accept that dinosaurs existed, and have come up with some bizarre theories involving the Flood in order to explain them away. Which makes you a Creationist among Creationists, an extremist among extremists.

    Were you hoping to change some minds here today, or are you just trying to make brownie points with God the same way people make up job contacts for their weekly unemployment vouchers? Scene from your trial: "But I DID try to convince people! See, I even went on Slashdot and tried to show them everything they know is wrong and I even went out of my way to insult their intelligence just like I'm supposed to. You can't blame me that they didn't drop their heathen ways and follow you instantly, oh Lord..."
  • Yup. A thicker atmosphere might go a long way to explaining things too. Esp. if the Yucatan impact blew away some of it. Or maybe dinosaurs were filled with helium?

    Hmm... I've been at work too long :-)

  • More likely is the possibility that ancient humans also found dinosaur bones. Think about this: Your primitive band of 10,000 BC humans is looking for a new cave when the group stumbles across a semi-complete T.Rex skeleton exposed in a streambed by last winters rains. Everybody recognizes it as a skeleton of a huge fearsome beast, but your primitive tribe has know way of knowing that it's millions of years old. You all move on, but for the rest of your lives tell the story of the great dragonmonster skeleton you found beside the stream. Your children tell their children, and after a few generations it becomes the story of the time their great ancestors victoriously defeated the evil dragon which was trying to keep them from reaching their new home.

    That's how legends start, after all :)
  • Blah. I first heard about this as a little kid watching the excellent animated movie, "Flight of the Dragons." I have no idea if it precedes Anne McCaffrey's book.

    The movie laid it out this way: Dragons raid diamond mines that are in limestone rock. They swallow the diamonds, which stick in their craw, and then eat the limestone. The diamonds help break up the limestone. Then when it gets to the stomach, it produces the H2 gas.
    -Matt
  • A poster writes "The worlds largest fossil nest [microsoft.com]", believed to be that of a microsoftosaur, was discovered by archeologists near a place which used to be called Redmond. Its 3000 feet across and about 40 ft high, and some have estimated the nest could have contained tens of thousands of employees. Disputes over how the monster could have supported its own ponderous weight is the source of "interesting" theories of dinosaur evolution."
  • My great uncle worked on the Manhattan project and I asked him about the "igniting the Earth's atmosphere" thing. He told me that it was actually a joke where the older scientists (who were about 30) would stand near the younger guys and talk about how they thought the chain reaction might spread to the atmosphere and blow up the planet. Later on, the younger scientists told reporters about it, not realizing they were being screwed with.

    -B
  • The site referenced by this article is quite suspect and oozes poor scientific method and reasoning. (The skeletal calculations are a joke.) That is not true of all Creationist/anti-evolutionist sites however. (The question of how such big animals were viable is an interesting one, but the analysis offered is quite weak, and inexplicably ignores the possibility that these and other fossils may have become "enlarged" by some unknown process. This hypothesis should be investigated if such size truly presents problems, as it may offer a more likely explanation for 170 lb. eagles than variable planetary gravity . Still, it seems difficult to envision a process that would enlarge so uniformly at such magnitudes...)

    It is quite possible to reject evolution solely on the bases of scientific fact and the way the scientific community plays fast and loose with actual facts in order to make them support the dogma of evolutionary development of man. A pretty good reference site is noted hacker Do-While Jones' site, Science Against Evolution [ridgenet.net]. Don't even bother to write a flaming reply until you've browsed his pages to see the extent of the scientific dishonesty plaguing this topic - I think you'll find he does an admirable job of sticking to factual, scientific evidence and arguments.

    Let's face facts folks, there's plenty of absolutely deplorable science on both sides, in both cases often driven by a dogmatic attempt to make the facts fit the theory. The only thing that can be argued with certainty from a scientific point of view is that we don't know how we got here, and we can't with any significant degree of certainty even date the things we find. Any statement beyond this is speculation, not science.

    A good example of this scientific dishonesty would be the "composite foot" literally dreamed up [ridgenet.net] for "Lucy" (afarensis, a fossil for which the feet are conspicuously absent!) to fit the Laetoli footprints in Tanzania. Although there is absolutely no evidence that afarensis made those footprints, Donald Johansen wanted to prove a connection so badly that he invented a foot for Lucy that would fit the footprints. This "composite foot" was "made from fossil bones belonging to Homo from nearby Olduvai Gorge combined with Hadar toe bones" - in other words, he used 3.5 myo toe bones from one species and foot bones from a (supposedly) entirely different species that lived a million years later, mixed thoroughly with imagination and preconceived notions! And so now evolutionists go around telling people "science" has proven afarensis made those tracks. Oh, yeah, that's good science! All this to explain a footprint that is by thier own admission indistinguishable from a modern human footprint, a foot print that in reality could be much younger than they assume.

    Seriously, I find it takes far less faith to believe in Creation than in evolution!

    Warning: Personal beliefs rant follows... As an added benefit, accepting that Creation could be true in turn led me to consider that perhaps the Bible was inerrant after all, as was believed by many people much brighter than I over centuries. As soon as you're willing to assume that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God (for which there is quite compelling scientific evidence by the way), you begin to see that that single presupposition leads to a perfectly logically consistent belief system which explains all the hard questions. Personally, I believe John Calvin tied all this together better than anyone since St. Paul, and Jonathan Edwards better than anyone since Calvin. (Edwards, although unfamiliar to many today, is generally acknowledged by historians as the most brilliant mind in the history of the New World: he entered the precursor to Yale at age thirteen with Latin, Greek, and Hebrew already under his belt. You can read a bit more about him at my friend Mark Trigsted's JonathanEdwards.com site [jonathanedwards.com].) Don't flame either Calvin or Edwards until you've read them and really tried to understand their arguments. I think you'll be blown away - in this sense Calvinism is perfect for Geeks, since it provides the only structured and sytematic Theology cabable of explaining all the things that really need explaining. This isn't warm, fuzzy, Christianity, but it passes the test of Truth, which is far more important than a feel-good factor. Some of us are proud to be Puritans.

  • Pern (Score:2)

    by / ( 33804 )
    You're thinking of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. Yes it let the dragons breath fire, but it wasn't necessary for flight, much less teleportation and other neat things they did -- witness the dragonettes (forerunners of the dragons) who could fly just fine without the stone.
  • More likely, the belt consists of stuff that was never able to condense into a planet because of tidal forces pulling on it. But that's just my opinion.
  • Skimming the 'interesting theories' article, it stuck me as being like the recent discovery of how bees actually are able to fly. Previously, the aerodynamic laws and theories were not able to explain how bees flew, and in fact they predicted that bees should not be able to fly.

    Basically, what we have is the fact that these creatures did actually exist, and presumably thrived. It simply remains to adjust our assumptions about their physical characteristics to account for this fact.

    On a slightly different topic, I saw a program which suggested that T.rex did not actually move very fast, since if they tripped, even at moderate speeds, they would mash their skulls.
  • The author does a good job of summarising a whole lot of questions we don't know about the dinosaurs. Although he concentrates on the sauropods, I thought the most interesting stuff in the article was about the pteranodons and so on - particularly about the wing span and everything. I wish he hadn't mentioned that bollocks about gravity increasing, because then there would have been an interesting debate about how the animals existed rather than one long flame towards him (as if most people on /. wouldn't have realised that the gravity theory is wrong anyway!)

    I did spot one flaw in his theory that no one else has mentioned - he asks things like how pteranodons could have survived if they couldn't take off quickly. Well who says they did? They're extinct, aren't they? :-)

    His maths might be a bit suspect, but they looked plausible to me, not that I'm a mathematician or a biologist. Rather than just saying that they don't make sense, why not say why?

  • Just last week (or two), the Field Museum of Natural History [fmnh.org] in Chicago [yahoo.com] unveiled the largest and most complete T-Rex skeleton to date. Called Sue [fmnh.org], the project took many months and many millions of dollars to complete.

    This helped many scientists gain added insight into the structure and composition of the T-Rex and other dinosaurs. Fun stuff. :)
  • Just looking at one of these suckers upright makes
    me laugh at the argument I once heard from
    someone, claiming that humans could probably have out-run a tyrannosaur. The reasoning stringently followed the laws of fluid dynamics and science's knowledge of the properties of present-day muscular tissue, completely ignoring the fact that evolution usually comes up with a way to achieve. Hell, I bet a tyrannosaur could have out-run a 4x4. And I'll bet twinkle-toes here could move, too.
  • Saturn Theory ( which the article references ) suggests that all the planets were in alignment in extreme proximity and in a geo-stationary northern position. I assume from this ( though they do not state it anywhere that I've read ) that gravity would be tremendously affected though in a peculiar way. The northern hemisphere would feel lighter while the southern would feel heavier. Again I haven't read this anywhere, so I'm just extrapolating.
  • At the beginning of the article they relate things as evidence of the Saturn Theory.. A far fetched if not radical theory about a period of time in "human" history where all planets were in close proximity for an extended period of time.
  • Check out the replies to this one.
  • I'm really interested how you can equate Holden with that last interesting FTL article at the NYT or even quantum mechanics in general? Occam's Razor cuts both ways you know.
  • Well, it is an interesting theory. Interesting as in "how in hell can anyway really think that would be true!" So this guy thinks that gravity was less than it is now 65 million or so years ago. So, what could make gravity less? It would mean that 65 million years ago the Earth would have had significantly less mass than it does now. However, despite all the claims made in this "theory" there is not one shred of evidence to support the idea that there was any change in the Earth's gravitational field of that magnitude.

    Granted, it's amazing how something that large could support itself and its own massive weight, but there is plenty of evidence which supports the theory that large sauropods like Seismosaurus did spend a considerable amount of time in watery environments to help ease the burden. To say that this isn't true because these sauropods don't have adaptations to watery environments isn't correct. Modern hippos provide a similar example. They are very clunky on land, but spend great deals of time in the water and don't display very many obvious adaptations to a watery environment.

    Interesting theory... but completely wrong...

  • All right! It's the world's first modular dinosaur. Built from existing components, no less!

    Yeah, but is it an Open Source dinosaur? And if so, when will we be able to download the Dino code from Sourceforge.net?

    Although, there might be some patent problems if they used human bones... I mean, won't the companies that have patents on portions of our genomes be pissed if we start building other creatures out of human parts?

    Maybe we need a GPL for human DNA?
  • Mr. Kazmaier is lifting this weight vertically with two arms supporting the bar weight and two legs supporting the bar and his body. In other words, he is supporting the the same bar weight twice, something Mr. Bronto doesn't have to do.

    Or... Actually, the article says Mr. Kazmaier is doing "squats" which do *not* involve lifting the bar over your head. The bar rests on your shoulder, and you ... squat.

    Check your math again. :)

  • If you look towards the bottom of the page, you'll see that their skeletons, including the 'seismosaur', are available for rental for at least part of the year. It would make a nice centerpiece for a school dance. Or maybe a gigantic scarecrow.

    "When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."

  • actually, in respect to the T-Rex scene (like so many other in that movie, they did it completely wrong. Contrary to popular belief (like anything else that's true), the Tyrannosaurus Rex was not the mighty hunter he is portrayed as. Becuase of his massive size, he kind of just lumbered along, and waddled after weak or dying prey, and finished it off. sorry to burst the proverbial bubble, but the "tyrant lizard king" was i giant vulture, whose tiny little arms did nothing more than help to get its lazt butt up in the mornings
  • IANAP (I am not a palentologist, but the Earth at the time was figured to be rotating at a faster rate, while some scientists have felt the spin itself wasn't perfectly horizontal but more of a "wobble".

    Nonetheless, as far as the larger sauropods and gravity are concerned, a couple theories have stressed that the tail and head movements of the creatures enabled it to survive. Like the physics that enable a bumblebee to remain aloft, the tail portion would've been in motion a great deal of the time, while the neckbones acted as a fulcrum.

  • Hm..they say "135 feet long and 22 ft high" of which i have no idea what is, then goes on to add "could have weighed up to 150 tons." Didn't they just change measuring system there? Shouldn't they measure it in pounds or something *G

    There are both US and metric tons. I assume that they were using US.

    For people in countries that use a sane measurement system:
    135 ft = 41.1 m
    22 ft = 6.7 m
    150 US tons = 136000 kg = 136 metric tons

  • The documentary "Walking with Dinosaurs" has some interesting insights on this problem of weight support. In depth studies were done not only on the fossil records, but on living creatures to determine how they deal with similar problems. The interesting point about elephants is that in order to be able to support their own weight, they walk with three legs on the ground at all times and not with the two leg at a time step we are accustomed to seeing in other 4 legged creatures. This allows for maximum weight support. The scientists that were involved in the making of Walking with Dinosaurs used this theory to help model the motions in their animation.

    One other thing to consider in this equation, and I beleive this to be a little known fact...Pound for pound, muscle and bone have higher tensile and compressive strength than steel. Also, legs are fairly impressive levers and capable of moving lots of weight. Its been many years since I did any mechanics calculations, but I think some interesting analysis could be done on proportunate strength when it comes to dionosaur legs.
  • Anyone interested in the validity of Ted Holden's interesting theories should stroll on down to the talk.origins news group and ask the residents about Ted Holden. Read this guy's webpages for humor, but know that he is so deadly serious and has been so persistent in his cries of catastrophism, conspiracy, and other mental constipation that overly large sections of the talk.origins FAQ deal with his nonsense. I'm sure he'll welcome the slashdot effect though.
  • All right! It's the world's first modular dinosaur. Built from existing components, no less!

    Although, there might be some patent problems if they used human bones... I mean, won't the companies that have patents on portions of our genomes be pissed if we start building other creatures out of human parts?

  • The earth's gravity has not changed appreciably since 4.5 billion years ago, when an object about the size of mars collided with proto-earth, flinging up our moon in the process. It's true that the moon is very slowly degrading the spin of the earth. In fact, if the sun didn't burn out first, the earth would eventually settle down to a day that's 47 times as long as it is now, due to tidal forces from the moon. This does not affect the dinosaurs, however, since they were fairly recent, on the geological scale.

    It is true that the spin of the earth does lessen gravity a little bit. I don't know the exact scale, but it is enough that some companies and countries are considering equatorial rocket launch platforms, since that added boost saves a lot of money on fuel. Still, this change does not make such a huge difference (as travelling from Ontario to the Bahamas will show) as to allow a quintupling or so in the size of the largest creatures on earth.

    I suppose I should clarify one thing. Contrary to what that evolution article claims, the Elephant is not the largest creature on earth. Think whales. How do they support their weight? They live in water. I do not consider it such a ridiculous concept that perhaps dinosaurs of this size lived mostly in water, with those nice long necks well suited for eating food on the shore while still staying deep enough in the channel to be supported in weight. Of course, a creature like this does not need to jump, as elephants do not. It may not have ever even laid down in its adult life.

    I agree with the physics in the article, but I think the author jumps to way too many conclusions.

  • The author does a good job of summarising a whole lot of questions we don't know about the dinosaurs.

    *Sigh* No, he doesn't. The author is Ted Holden, known kook and suspected idiot of the talk.origins newsgroup. He also believes wholeheartedly in Velikovsky's "theories" about Venus careering around the solar system in Biblical times, and he believes that the Earth once orbited Saturn.

    Nuff said.

  • Sure, they *say* they did this.... how do we know they didn't just glue together a bunch of bones from some other dinosaurs (or humans, for that matter)?? Think about it...
  • Why don't they name it Microsoftosaurus?
  • Whoa now... take a look at any skeletal diagram of a tyrannosaur's legs. See how much they look like ostrich legs? It's well known that the aforementioned bird can run rather quickly, and there is no animal on earth that possesses legs like an ostrich that is incapable of running at a decent clip; the simple fact that T. Rex was an extremely large creature wouldn't change that. Furthermore, this is absolutely a killing machine - the arms are on their way out from an evolutionary standpoint not because the dinosaur was a lazy scavenger (which would have been nearly impossible given its size and warmblooded nature) but because all the musculature and "firepower" was being focused in its head and upper torso. In a few million more years (as though that were really such a short length of time - evolution ain't overnight even in punctuated equilibrium), these animals would have no arms whatsoever and possess jaws that made their predecessors look almost like friendly puppies by comparison (well, almost). ^_^
  • I really thought the explanation about the impossibility of the existence of the larger dinosaur skeleton was a joke. Was it? One serious assumption made was that the dinosaurs needed to lift things, even themselves. Perhaps the larger saurians NEVER SAT DOWN. If you weighed over 10 tons and had to eat for several hours of the day, wouldn't you avoid sitting? The other statements made involved the impossibilities of the blood pressure necessary to pump blood up 50 feet of neck. The giraffe can do it to 20 and the skeleton in question clearly shows the head about level with the body. The significant pressure comes from a differential between the heart and the head/feet, not the distance from the head to the ground. A plumber could do that math for you. Sure, they probably couldn't hold their heads high for very long, just as a fighter pilot can't handle 12 Gs for very long. The gravitational effect of all the planets combined is a small fraction of the effect of the moon upon the earth. The earth would need a ridiculous rotational speed for gravity to be significantly less apparent.

  • Bad Science (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @06:42PM (#1034913)
    The author of the cited article, Ted Holden, is notorious on talk.origins as a creationist proponent of some utterly screwball theories of "catastrophism". See the talk.origins faq [talkorigins.org] list on catastrophism for more information. In short, this article cited is utterly without scientific merit.

    /. really needs to get its shit together on the science articles... way too many of 'em contain some awfully embarressing nonsense in them. All the faster-than-light, quantum woo-woo nonsense, and now this creationist bullshit makes /. look like a bunch of rubes.

  • Liberals: The REAL Dinosaurs (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @05:56PM (#1034914)
    Come on guys, give it up. Seriously. Enough is enough.

    You can only sloppily slap together so many shoddy plaster "skeletons" before people begin to catch on. Sure, you had people going for a while. Hell, with the help of Hollywood leftists (Spielberg, Kennedy, Marshall, etc.) and their Jurassic Park movies, you almost fooled a whole new generation of impressionable minds into believing that all of these "terrible lizards" actually existed! Criminy! You same people are the ones responsible for libberish such as Piltdown Man and Nebraska Man. As a small child, I can remember my friends having little "pop-up books" about dinosaurs. Where did all of the money you made from the books go? Planned Parenthood? Handgun Control, Inc?

    Unfortunately for the liberals, the game is up. The public now knows that the whole Theory of Dinosaurs is a fraud, a sham, the worst pseudoscientific trickery that has ever been perpetrated on the citizens of God's green Earth. And it was simple math that did it. Liberals like to keep the public "dumbed down"; apparently they were hoping that nobody would notice that you can't have 65 million year-old fossils on a 6,000 year-old Earth! Heh heh heh .. well, guess what, my lib-lab friends, the game is up. It is only a matter of time before news of your faked dig sites and plaster skeletons spread across the land. And then what will you do?

    Who knows .. in 65 million years, the fossils that we dig up will probably be those of the liberals! We can display them in museums and make movies about them! "Recently-revived ancestors of humans break free from their exhibits and attempt to redistribute your wealth and enslave your children in the new film Socialist Park!" I can just see the advertisements now. In the meantime, you liberals will have to come up with some new attack on God. This one didn't work. It didn't work by a long shot. I hope that you all will have the good taste to take down all of your "dinosaur" exhibits from museums and admit that they are frauds. It is the only honorable thing to do.

  • Turtles, all the way! (Score:3)

    by jabber ( 13196 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @06:49PM (#1034915) Homepage
    nothing any larger than the largest elephants could live in our world today

    Keep in mind that before the train conquered the Wild Wild West, some people proclaimed that man would not be able to breathe at the amazing speeds (of 30 MPH) that the train promissed. After all, it was kind of hard to breathe regularly on a galloping horse, so going even faster would be impossible.

    The folks involved in the Manhattan Project were fearful that their first test blast might ignite the Earth's atmosphere, killing everyone instantly. These were scientists, mathematicians and physicists - but they had no experience and were forced to speculate.

    At one time, the world was flat, and then suddenly became round when Magellan's ship didn't fall of the edge of it in his circumnavigation attempt. The Moon is just fossilized green cheese, and there's still a face on Mars - a sure sign of intelligent life there, but not much here.

    Nice try, but it's turtles all the way down, and evolution is still illegal in Kansas. :)

  • I'm curious.. (Score:3)

    by citizenc ( 60589 ) <caryNO@SPAMglidedesign.ca> on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @05:45PM (#1034916) Journal
    The article is actually quite interesting..
    Standing Up at 70,000 lb. Any animal has to be able to lift its own weight off the ground, i.e. stand up, with no more difficulty than Kazmaier experiences doing a 1000 lb. squat. Consider, however, what would happen to Mr. Kazmaier, were he to be scaled up to 70,000 lb., the weight commonly given for the brontosaur. Kazmaier's maximum effort at standing, fully warmed up, assuming the 1000 lb. squat, was 1340 lb. (1000 for the bar and 340 for himself). The scaled maximum lift would be a solution to:

    1340/340^.667 = x/70,000^667 or 47,558 lb..

    He'd not be able to lift his weight off the ground!
    This makes so much sense.. I always wondered about that, ever since I saw Jurassic Park, with the T-Rex tearing along at like 100 km/hour chasing the jeep through the woods. Assuming the Rex is, say, oh 70 tons,

    M = 70,000 KG
    V = 27.7 M/S

    Kinetic Energy = 1/2(m)(v^2) = 1/2(70,000)(27.7)^2 = 26,855,150 J of energy

    I still wonder if an animal that size COULD, in fact, exerpt that much energy. And even if it could, don't you think it would get tired, maybe start dragging it's stomach on the ground?

    .- CitizenC (User Info [slashdot.org])

  • Re:problem with "interesting theories" (Score:3)

    by technos ( 73414 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @07:06PM (#1034917) Homepage Journal
    Hydrogen, methane perhaps. Just imagine a giant 'swim bladder' attached to the lower GI to trap gas..Feeling a little heavy on your feet? Hit the jurassic Taco Bell for some 49 cent Gorditas with a double side of Bush's baked beans..

    No helium; After all, it was detected first on the surface of the Sun, not on Earth. Not enough of it, per se..

  • Re:I'm curious.. (Score:3)

    by MattXVI ( 82494 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @06:23PM (#1034918) Homepage
    Your feeling of gravity is in almost NO WAY related to the rotation of the Earth. If anything, it would take a much much faster spin to lighten you just a few percent, and even then the effect would only be noticable in the more tropical regions. And it's extraordinarily unlikely that the planet was much less massive.

    It seems much more plausible that we are either overestimating the mass of the animals or underestimating the ingenuity of their musculature.

    "When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood."

  • i can see the kids now... (Score:3)

    by fluxrad ( 125130 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @05:43PM (#1034919)
    "daddy, there's a dinosaur in our backyard..."

    "...and the neighbor's back yard, and our other neighbor's back yard, and..."


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • I thought the world's biggest dinosaur was ... (Score:5)

    by dustpuppy ( 5260 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @06:00PM (#1034920)
    located in Redmond :)

    *ducks back into the trench for cover*

  • problem with "interesting theories" (Score:5)

    by dito ( 9528 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @05:46PM (#1034921) Homepage
    Whoever wrote that page about dinosaurs and gravity obviosuly never saw the Horizon program (BBC Science program, can't remember what it's called in the US, maybe "Nova") on the "Natural History of an Alien".

    They made a very interesting point about worlds with stronger gravity than earth. As gravity increases, so does air density and it increases in such a way that in a higher gravity environment the increase in air density is enough to allow even bigger flying creatures despite the stronger gravity.

    For flying creatures, lifting force will increase as the square of the force of gravity.

    So his point about bigger flying creatures needing weaker gravity is in error.

    Bigger flying creatures implies stronger gravity, which kinda messes up his argument.

    (If you didn't read the page, he's arguing that the existence of enormous dinosaurs implies that gravity was a weaker force in pre-history)

  • Interesting Theories (Score:5)

    by jabber ( 13196 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @06:40PM (#1034922) Homepage
    I tried, I really, really tried. I gave an honest College try, and attempted to work my way through the 'Interesting Theories' link.

    What a bunch of BULL.

    Remember the 'Religious Right' pages that sprouted all over the net like mushrooms after a rainstorm, as soon as South Park - Bigger, Longer and Uncut came out? That's exactly how the 'IT' article reads.

    It's peppered with references to books published by Harvard Press, Oxford Press and whatever else - in an effort to add credibility to something that holds water like a sieve.

    It's chock full of numbers that in another context might make sense, but here come out of nowhere to fit into an argument, and disappear again when they become 'inconvenient'. We all know how a liberal sprinkling of math tends to intimidate people into agreeing with the (obviously more intelligent) author. Microsoft does this a whole lot - as do tele-evangelists in their counting of statistical distribution of Deadly Sins in SP:BL&U

    The ideas presented in the article are preposterous. They are a lame, ignorant attempt to answer some valid questions - but they are absolute 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

    Read the article for amusement only. It's the pseudo-intellectual equivalent of FUD, and a great way to get the imagination of junior-high kids fired up. Nothing more.

  • Interesting Kook Link (Score:5)

    by cosmicaug ( 150534 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @11:53PM (#1034923)

    Interesting link [bearfabrique.org] referenced in this story. It links to none other than the web site of a well known creationist kook [talkorigins.org] of talk.origins named Ted Holden.

    The theory in his site is that dinosaurs must have experienced a reduced gravity (with respect to the present value) to be able support the massive weight of the larger species.

    To support his argument he compares a very strong powerlifter to dinosaurs using the square cubed assumption for scaling (force produced by muscles goes up as a square of body length because it depends on cross section while weight goes up as the cube because it depends on volume).

    Of course, the problem with all of this is that this scaling is way too simplistic since we are comparing apples to oranges (Homo sapiens to various sauropods, to be exact). Proof of this is that, contrary to Holden's claims, it doesn't even work for elephants.

    From Holden's example, Kazmaier, weighing in at 340 lb., can do a 1000 lb. squat (not the strongest adjusting for body weight, see here [drsquat.com], for an example). To see how this scales to a normal weight male (I shall consider myself at 175 lb. the norm for the sake of argument) we take the ratio my weight to Kazmaier's of 175/340 = 0.51. Taking the square cubed assumption it turns into .51^^(2/3) = .64 . meaning a normal 175 lb. person being able to lift .64 * 1340 lb. = 861 lb. to match Kazmaier's performance. As this figure includes body weight it turns into the ability to squat 861 lb.- 175 lb. = 686 lb.

    Now, the most I've squatted is 450 lb. (which turns into 450 lb. + 175 lb. = 625 lb.) and I consider myself to have (for a nearly untrained person) near freakish lower body strength. I can assure any and all that I cannot move around comfortably with 450 lb. on my shoulders and can barely take some faltering steps in this situation (and, though I don't know the rules of powerlifting, I'pretty sure that the lift would not have been good enough to count in a competition --not that anyone would be likely to be impressed anyway).

    Let's see what the most is that one can weight if the best lifting they can do would match my performance (better to compare myself --freakish lower body strength and all-- rather than a real athlete pushing the limits).

    Using Holden's formula (which is correct, though its assumptions are flawed), we get:

    625/175^^(2/3) = X/X^^(2/3)
    The left side turns into 20.0 and the right turns into X^^(1/3). Cubing both sides we get that X = 8000. Thus, 8000 lb. is the most one could weigh to be able to carry one's own weight to match my lifting performance. Note that this doesn't mean walking around all day and even occasionally running quite fast (as elephants are known to do normally in the wild) but rather lifting one's own body weight badly with a maximal effort (and then, perhaps, sinking back exhausted into the couch to watch the Oprah Winfrey [oprah.com] show).

    Adult elephants, on the other hand, can weight a lot more than 8000 lb.. And to those who may point out that my own bipedalism puts me at a disadvantage, I shall point out that circus elephants seem to be able to get on their back feet with great ease (it certainly seems to take a lot less effort than it takes for me to squat a mere 450 lb.)

    Thus, taking a more reasonable lift for the scaling exercise and following Holden's assumptions, not only should elephant's fail carrying around their own weight, but they should fail miserably.

    But elephants, even very large ones, seem to manage quite well, thank you very much. Thus, my claim that Holden's assumptions do not really hold up under scrutiny is supported

  • Re:Bad Science (Score:5)

    by bebot ( 194612 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @07:00PM (#1034924)
    The article cited, Sauropods, Elephants, Weightlifters [talkorigins.org], does seem to point to the fallacy of the findings of the author, Ted Holden.

    I definitely think it's worth a look, and it's a pity that by giving this article a score of 0 some people will miss out on reading these arguments.

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