58 replies to this topic

[Nathan DiYorio]

scowl, on 26 February 2013 - 08:08 PM, said:

I honestly have a trouble believing dinosaurs ever existed! Some of those things were as big as a house. How could they move around to eat enough food? How could they breathe? What heart could keep that much blood flowing through those gigantic bodies? I don't even want to think about how they mated.

I saw a plasticized corpse of a giraffe at a Body Worlds exhibit here and the scale of the innards of even that relatively small creature was amazing. The diaphragm looked like a small trampoline.

It's easy to get the food you need in a world where everything is as big as a car.

But you're right. In the modern world, where things are much smaller, a dinosaur-sized creature probably could not survive outside of the water without an extremely low metabolic rate.

[tapirmusic]

Ryu, on 26 February 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

Of course if you happen to be a Christian who believes the Earth is only 5000 years old and all the fossils are fakes planted by satan and/or god to fool us then this discussion is meaningless.

Wow.  What an incredibly ignorant thing to say.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

tapirmusic, on 26 February 2013 - 10:46 PM, said:

Wow.  What an incredibly ignorant thing to say.

Not really, people on this very forum have said that fossils are tricks by Satan.

[WatchingTheStars]

I think that living dinosaurs are extremely unlikely. It's been more than 65 million years since the extinction of the dinosaurs. I'd think they would've evolved into something, died out, been discovered, etc. Also, I'm assuming that Earth has changed in many ways since the reign of the dinosaurs. How would they cope with the new environment? Would it have the same food they would need? The same prey/predators? The geography and climate? And the list goes on.

And if it was a large dinosaur, it would be very easy to discover. Not only due to its size, but think about the waste it would leave behind, the tracks, the signs of its habitat, its feeding grounds, etc. And this is just for one of these large creatures. If there were more for a breeding population, then take all that and multiply it by however many creatures you need to have a stable population. For the small dinosaurs, I would believe that it would still leave behind evidence of its existence. And I refer to reasons I have stated in the first paragraph.

I don't think we want a real-life Jurassic Park incident happening anyways.

[Ecnal]

scowl, on 26 February 2013 - 08:08 PM, said:

I honestly have a trouble believing dinosaurs ever existed! Some of those things were as big as a house. How could they move around to eat enough food? How could they breathe? What heart could keep that much blood flowing through those gigantic bodies? I don't even want to think about how they mated.

I saw a plasticized corpse of a giraffe at a Body Worlds exhibit here and the scale of the innards of even that relatively small creature was amazing. The diaphragm looked like a small trampoline.

Are... are you serious?

[Ryu]

tapirmusic, on 26 February 2013 - 10:46 PM, said:

Wow.  What an incredibly ignorant thing to say.

Oops..maybe I should have said SOME christians.

[Rafterman]

Ryu, on 27 February 2013 - 12:18 AM, said:

Oops..maybe I should have said SOME christians.

Actually a more accurate phrase would have been "a very small percentage of Christians".

[JesseCuster]

Ryu, on 26 February 2013 - 06:43 PM, said:

Well..there is this inconvenient thing called "fossils" and then you have the whole 'carbon dating' and all that so the physical evidence speaks for itself.

I don't think the OP is arguing that dinosaurs never existed, merely that modern cryptozoology claims of big-ass dinosaurs in remote areas of Africa or South America are very silly and unlikely to be true.

Also, dinosaur fossils aren't dated using carbon dating.  They're WAY too old for that method.  Carbon dating is only accurate up to about 50,000 years. Other radiometric dating methods like K-Ar are used for fossils.

[The Silver Thong]

[The Silver Thong]

Archimedes, on 27 February 2013 - 12:46 AM, said:

I don't think the OP is arguing that dinosaurs never existed, merely that modern cryptozoology claims of big-ass dinosaurs in remote areas of Africa or South America are very silly and unlikely to be true.

Also, dinosaur fossils aren't dated using carbon dating.  They're WAY too old for that method.  Carbon dating is only accurate up to about 50,000 years. Other radiometric dating methods like K-Ar are used for fossils.

Radiocarbon dating is quit accurate. Its the messure of how radiation decays

[JesseCuster]

The Silver Thong, on 27 February 2013 - 12:57 AM, said:

Radiocarbon dating is quit accurate. Its the messure of how radiation decays

I agree. I didn't say it wasn't accurate.  I just said it was only accurate up to a certain limit (c. 50,000 years) and only for items of organic material.  You can't carbon date a flint axe, but you can perhaps indirectly date it via carbon dating associated organic artefacts.

My post wasn't meant as a slight against carbon dating, it's just that people sometimes equate it with radioisotope dating and other dating methods in general.  Dinosaur fossils aren't carbon dated because there is no organic carbon in a 100 million year old bone fossil. That was my point.

Other radioisotope dating methods (like K-Ar) are used for things much older than the limits of carbon dating.

[Everdred]

Archimedes, on 27 February 2013 - 01:25 AM, said:

My post wasn't meant as a slight against carbon dating, it's just that people sometimes equate it with radioisotope dating and other dating methods in general.  Dinosaur fossils aren't carbon dated because there is no organic carbon in a 100 million year old bone fossil. That was my point.

Plus the vast majority of these fossils are petrified, meaning the actual bone was replaced by rock, preserving the shape but none of the original organic material.

[keninsc]

ali smack, on 26 February 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

I don't understand how people can believe in them existing. it's just not likely at all. the food they'd have to eat would be imense, how would they survive exinction, the atmosphere and climate is totally different. its just not possible. but people still inisist on seeing them.
why?

Not only that but the oxygen levels are a lot lower than they were back in those days as well. People want to believe in stuff like this same as they want to believe in anything else, including Santa and the Tooth Fairy.......although, I am holding out for Santa myself.

What?

[DBunker]

ali smack, on 26 February 2013 - 06:15 PM, said:

I don't understand how people can believe in them existing. it's just not likely at all. the food they'd have to eat would be imense, how would they survive exinction, the atmosphere and climate is totally different. its just not possible. but people still inisist on seeing them.
why?

People love to think about these things. They love the "what if"..... thats why we have Bigfoot, Nessie, Alien spaceships, Ghosts and Angles all over the place.

[keninsc]

DBunker, on 27 February 2013 - 04:08 AM, said:

People love to think about these things. They love the "what if"..... thats why we have Bigfoot, Nessie, Alien spaceships, Ghosts and Angles all over the place.

Oh yes, angles........and Plane Geometry as a result as well.