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9-ton Dino?

PfhorRunner
polycounter lvl 18
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PfhorRunner polycounter lvl 18
http://www.theregister.com/2006/08/29/new_dino_species/

For those of you interested. I've always wondered why some species evolved the way they did, and how others different. It's amazing to me how HUGE some extinct animals were. Always brings up the Quality-versus-Quantity mentality in my thoughts. confused.gif

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  • Tulkamir
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    Tulkamir polycounter lvl 18
    They were so big because the earth was a different size back then so the gravity was less and they could grow bigger.

    Yeesh, don't ya know the hollow earth theory?! :|

    Perdy cool stuff though. smile.gif

    (Happy birthday by the way). laugh.gif
  • [MILES]
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    [MILES] polycounter lvl 17
    Interesting video about dinosaurs that touches on the answer to this question: http://drdino.activeforjesus.com/videos/seminar3_300k.wmv

  • snemmy
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    snemmy polycounter lvl 18
    the earth was more OXYGEN rich back then, something like 12-20% richer, allowing much larger species.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    So what your saying snemmy is if i give a kid extra oxygen that they will grow super sized? If so i need to make a mental note to try this when i have kids...

    super sized kids for life!
  • snemmy
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    snemmy polycounter lvl 18
    eh.. maybe im wrong, but that was about the only explanation i've heard much on.

    [ QUOTE ]
    Oxygen in the air, to be precise. Some scientists think that the air at the time of the dinosaurs contained a lot more oxygen gas than it does today. Since the oxygen animals breathe is used in chemical reactions that power their muscles, more oxygen in the air might have made it possible for dinosaurs to get more oxygen into their muscles. That could have made them much stronger than animals today—strong enough to carry around huge bodies. It might also explain how sauropods managed to breathe through those long, skinny necks of theirs. To see why that's a problem, try putting a drinking straw in your mouth and breathing through it. Quite a challenge, isn't it? But it would be easier to breathe if the air had more oxygen in it.

    The evidence for more oxygen in the air at the time of the dinosaurs comes from bubbles in 100-million-year-old amber, tree sap that hardened during the time of the dinosaurs. By crushing the amber and analyzing the gases that come out, scientists at the U. S. Geological Survey think they can tell what the air was like back then. Other scientists who have done similar experiments, however, think the oxygen content probably was not higher. Still others suspect that dinosaurs were better at capturing oxygen because they had more efficient lungs than mammals do. That's certainly possible—after all, birds, the closest living relatives of ancient dinosaurs, have better lungs than mammals. Until some lucky paleontologist digs up a dinosaur lung, though, nobody will know for sure.


    [/ QUOTE ]

    but really no one knows.

    TGZ: you dont need oxygen, just feed them bovine growth hormone injected foods from when they are babies. then they can start puberty at 9 and 10 rather than 13 or 14. tongue.gif
  • PfhorRunner
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    PfhorRunner polycounter lvl 18
    More efficient lungs huh?
    Interesting explination, but i'm still skeptical.

    Tulkamir: thanks ^.^
  • ebagg
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    ebagg polycounter lvl 17
    Dayamn, that's a biggun, must be a pain in the ass to parallel park! laugh.gif
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    the bones just got bigger over millions of years in the ground, simple.

    a t-rex was only about knee height.
  • Toomas
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    Toomas polycounter lvl 18
    Larger prey animals are harder to kill thus they survive and when it goes on and on for ages there will only be big prey animals so predators have to grow too.
    But they did die out so it was inefficient way to go.

    BTW largest recorded elephant weighed 12tons...
  • MoP
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    MoP polycounter lvl 18
    Yeah, there were some dinosaurs that weighed up to 45 tons and were about 30 metres long. Check out Seismosaurus!
  • danr
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    danr interpolator
    i would like to thank nature for making these things extinct. Imagine finding one of them in your back garden with its head in your dustbin
  • Gmanx
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    Gmanx polycounter lvl 19
    [ QUOTE ]
    i would like to thank nature for making these things extinct. Imagine finding one of them in your back garden with its head in your dustbin

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Imagine having one poop in your yard...
  • hawken
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    hawken polycounter lvl 19
    actually the reason why dinosaurs reached such huge proportions is something called "vicariance".

    when the super continent started to break up in the mid jurassic and formed separate continents, different eco systems were formed, in addition dinosaurs were able to evolve separately from one another. In the areas where vegetation became dense, the herbivores grew larger, and because the herbivores became larger, the carnivores also needed to become larger to keep up.

    This went on for nearly 100 million years

    We mostly only have dinosaur bones from the late jurassic, when a cataclysmic event virtually wiped them all out. Who knows how big dinosaurs would have gotten given another 100 million years to roam the planet? They might have even made an internet smile.gif
  • Mark Dygert
    So big in fact they can't take a picture of it...
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