DOES THE DINOSAUR FIT THE SIZE?
Hi there to all you good people out there! I’ve sure had some hectic days this week, but even so, I was able to spend some quality time with our precious Lord Jesus. It’s awesome that He’s so big He has the time and room for everyone!
Speaking of large sizes, did you ever wonder how the young of the large dinosaur (dragon) kind ever reached their full size with so many predators? After all, even a small--lets say a sheep or
horse size--T. rex would be just a nice snack for a full grown, adult Allosaurus. But all the large dinos were once very small, like when they first hatched and shortly there after. Certainly many of the young did succumb to predators. “Many reptiles grow throughout their lifetimes, gradually tapering off with age. An example is the Nile crocodile, the largest of the living reptiles. Some mammals, such as elephants, also grow slowly throughout their lives. The largest dinosaur fossils, therefore, may be from creatures that had lived for centuries.”1 But how did the hatchlings ever survive years of development to finally outgrow the large carnivores? You might be surprised…
“Two evidences suggest a rapid early growth rate for the dinosaurs. First, few half-grown dinosaur fossils have been found. Thus, dinosaurs may have rapidly passed through their juvenile phases. It may also be that specimens having smaller, fragile bones simply did not often survive the burial and fossilization process. Second, dinosaur bone texture, especially for the stegosaurs, shows evidence of rapid youthful growth. Robert Bakker (a paleontologist) estimates that stegosaurs may have grown from an egg to five tons in just one decade (Bakker, 1986)...In general, large dinosaur size also provided defense against attack from smaller foes. In the animal world there is a measure of safety in large size. Predators rarely attack something that is big an strong enough to injure them.”2 It seems God had provided for survival of the large dinosaurs by coding their DNA for rapid juvenile growth.
In addition to that, there is the very real problem of weight vs. volume. For example an animal whose size is doubled (23 [length, height, and width]), will only have its bone strength increase about 3/2nd of that (22) because the bone’s supporting strength depends on the cross-sectional area. So, “Animals much larger than the dinosaurs would require bones too bulky to be practical. Notice that bone size must increase substantially out of proportion to animal size. King Kong and Godzilla can exist only in movies--not in the real world. The same area-volume reasoning also limits the
God has thought of every detail so get out there and enjoy His wonderful world!
God bless and take care!
Willow Dressel
This week in the night skies; for the northern lats; “Summer is hardly more than a third over, astronomically speaking. But already the Great Square of Pegasus, symbol of the coming fall, heaves up from behind the east-northeast horizon at dusk and climbs higher in the east through the evening. It's balancing on one corner.”4
And for the southern lats; “Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques is bright enough (magnitude 6) to potentially be seen in binoculars, but it is low to the horizon, and the rapidly brightening sky this week soon overwhelms it. Look to the left of the bright star Elnath (the tip of the horn of Taurus the Bull) with strong binoculars (at least 10x50's) for a fuzzy dot in the very early twilight. The New Moon is Sunday July 27. Jupiter is lost in the twilight. Mars and Saturn are prominent in the evening sky. Venus is prominent in the morning sky. The crescent Moon is close to Venus on the 25th, and Mercury on the 26th.”5
References:
1-3DeYoung, Don, PhD. Why Were Dinosaurs so Large? Creation Matters, Volume 19, Number 3, May/June 2014,p 5.
4http://www.skyandtelescope.com
5http://www.astroblogger.blogspot.com
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