New Theory Suggests Dinosaurs Were Already Dying When Asteroid Hit (phys.org)

The new "biotic revenge hypothesis" suggests that dinosaurs were killed off by toxic plants. (And an inability to recognize the taste of a toxic plant.) the gmr summarizes a new paper reported at Phys.org: The dinosaur population had been drastically decreasing before the asteroid impact, [and] the appearance of the first flowering plants -- angiosperms -- in the fossil record coincides with the gradual disappearance of the dinosaurs... The scientists concluded that though the asteroid played a role in the extinction of dinosaurs, the "plants had already placed severe strain on the species."
Crocodiles (believed to be descended from dinosaurs) also can't recognize the taste of toxic plants -- the researchers tested 10 different species. And they point out that not only did dinosaurs start to disappear before the asteroid impact -- they continued to "gradually disappear for millions of years afterward."

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Galileo's Square-Cube Law

[paradigmsareconstruc]

Galileo's Square-Cube Law appears to work for all land-walking animals alive today, but the scientific community seems to ignore its problematic application to the dinosaurs. Is it because there would seem to be a number of dinosaurs which could not seemingly exist in today's gravity?

"How could dinosaurs get so big despite Galileo's square cube law?

The law - Square-cube law
From wikipedia

'The giant monsters seen in horror movies (e.g., Godzilla or King Kong) are also unrealistic, as their sheer size would force them to collapse.'

Wouldn't the law also affect dinosaurs like the Giraffatitan?

1 Answer
Apala Chaturvedi

Galileo's Dialogue Concerning Two New Sciences contained what he considered to be one of his most profound insights: the square-cube law. If two cubes are made of the same material then they will have the same density. Yet since the two cubes have different area to volume ratios they will likewise have different stress at the base of each cube. If too much stress is placed on an object then it will fail, or in this case a large cube has a much greater possibility of collapsing. This is why sandcastles can only be a few feet high.

Galileo applied this to animals, what we now call allometry, and noted that a this implies the diameter of bones should be proportional to their length. It explains why ants can walk around on spindly little legs while lifting 50 times their body weight, compared to elephants with their tree-trunk sized feet who would strain to lift a quarter of their mass.

Also because of the Square-Cube Law, larger animals have less relative muscle strength than smaller animals. Both the muscle strength and bone strength are functions of the cross sectional area, while the weight of the animal is a function of volume.

It is because of relative muscle strength that an ant can lift fifty times its weight while a human can lift an amount equal to its own weight, and an Asian elephant can only lift 25% of its own weight. The greater muscle to weight ratio of smaller animals is what allows them to jump higher than several times their own height, while at the other extreme an elephant can not even jump.

While Galileo was successful in convincing the Church and the conservative science community that the world is not flat, the conservative science community has yet to embrace Galileo's Square-Cube Law even though it is clearly correct and fundamental to understanding every major science discipline.

Something additional to note is the common occurrence of serious bone diseases such as osteoporosis and arthritis observed in mammoth remains, for this could be called a vindication for the idea that mammoths existed at the very edge of the Square-Cube Law, or that a change in gravity is part of what destroyed them. There's additional discussion of the situation here

Re:Crocodiles are dinosaurs - since when?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!

So...

[BitztreamNotARealNam]

How's life in the hypocrite lane?