Dinosaurs n Giant Humans cont.. (No religion please)

[thenumbersix]

Dinosaurs n Giant Humans cont.. (No religion please)

To carry on from the previous thread. Regradless of the validity of the evidence it does raise a good question that has always bugged me.

Why is it they were so big yet, generally, no land animals nowadays are so large, could they even carry their own weight if they were ?

My theory is that the supposed meteor that wiped out life during this time hit the earth so hard that it slowed it's rotation. Would it then make sense that if the centrifugal force, attempting to throw us off the planets' surface, is recuced then gravity has a greater effect on us thus restricting the size we can grow to ?

Is interesting that the only animals that seem to have survived this period were either ocean/air bound or already reasonably sized !

 

[binary]

Re: Dinosaurs n Giant Humans cont.. (No religion please)

hehe, I like the "No Religion, please." part of your title. Hehe, should I start reciting their lyrics for you? ahh, I am joking. But seriously...

I often wonder what I dinosaur's experience was like. I love shows with the CG regeneration of events that could have surrounded the huge natural disasters which explain in very rough detail what kinds of reactions certain dinosaurs would have had to certain things.

I often wonder this specifically: If there were a race of dinosaurs that developed the ability to perceive their environment with meanings as complex and comprehensive as say Australopithecus or perhaps even a Chimp, what kind of existence would such dinosaurs experience? Would it be terrifying and horrible?? I mean not to say that things aren't terrifying and horrible for a lot of animals these days, but from what I can tell, everything had big nasty teeth, or big nasty horns or big nasty claws and mace-tails to defend themselves or to make a meal out of the big nasty things that tried to defend themselves against the even bigger nastier things. It just seems to me like it would have been very very grim and awful.

B.

 

[binary]

Re: Dinosaurs n Giant Humans cont.. (No religion please)

Crap! I totally forgot the reason that I wanted to reply to this in the first place. There's been a lot of excitement about the 'little humans' found in Indonesia a little while ago. The media attention focussed on the fact that these little guys were, in fact, a different species (not just pygmie-like) and were much smaller than real humans. From some of the info surrounding those little guys I remember getting that the smaller body size was from a lack of food resources. Smaller body = less need for food.

This is as general as a rule can get when it comes to organisms and it would certainly apply to dinosaurs and has likely been written about. My first guess was that perhaps there was just more food - things were less scarce.

If you have a lot of food and you can get very very very big, you have a better chance at intimidating the things that are smaller than you and are very very pointy and snarly.

So I figure that for sure, size would have been a distinct evolutionary advantage. The only hitch is, what would have made the earth capable of producing more in the way of nourishment back then? This led me to guess that if you have a supercontinent, Pangea, then you're not restricted to as small a geographical area.

I'm not sure if this has been written about or not, but I would guess that if the bigger herd animals can move about on a nearly global scale, then they would have access to resources all over the place. There could perhaps be abundance because at any given time, groups of animals occupying the same ecological niche could be in completely different places. If migrational treks were as spanning as they COULD have been back then, then it is likely that the plants would likely have had time to regenerate before the next herd of Herbivores moved through to clean up.

hmmm.... This still sounds fishy to me though. I think that this is perhaps just a guess and its probably wrong. It may have been that there was just more to eat. Still though, I have to think that living on a supercontinent must have helped with more opportunity for access to resources.

Some things certainly stayed small, but it is certainly an evolutionary advantage to be small. And don't forget that we have some pretty massive land animals these days... even if they are dwarfed by their ancient reptilian brethren.

 

[thenumbersix]

Re: Dinosaurs n Giant Humans cont.. (No religion please)

A very compelling idea, resource would definitely restrict a species.

We could argue that humans should, in theory, get shorter yet we have a 'social' influence on our development, how much taller is better ?

Will we be averaging 10ft in 1000 years ? In evolutionary terms we are straightening and gaining height, well some of us