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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: more on large animals and gravity
Message-ID: <709@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Aug-85 12:10:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.709
Posted: Tue Aug 27 12:10:07 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Aug-85 22:48:09 EDT
References: <382@imsvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 76

In article <382@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>      I went  back to  the library and spent several hours looking
> at the more recent  dinosaur books...  The Avon Field Guide to Dinosaurs,
> 1983...  Edwin  Colbert's  "Dinosaurs,  an  Illustrated History", Hammond,
> 1983...  No mention  of any precise math formulations in either these
> two or any of the other  books  I  found.

Your ideas of proper library work are as ludicrous as your ignorance of
biology and Velikovski's ignorance of physics.  Do you really expect to
find calculations of loading of dinosaur legs in popular works?  These
aren't even college textbooks, let alone research papers where this
information would originally have been published.

>      I have news for  Stanley Friesen,  the editors  at Avon, and
> anyone else  interested in  dinosaurs.  Nothing  makes it in this
> world by  wallowing,  shuffling,  floundering,  hobbling, gliding
> without being  able to  flap your  wings and  FLY when needed, or
> flying at 5 mph.

Evidently you know very little about the life still extant on our planet.
Nor do you seem hesitant to misrepresent other's arguments.

> Likewise, the pteratorn  had to  catch prey  to live.
> Try catching  a deer or rabbit sometime with your governor set at
> 5 miles per hour.  Likewise, the picture science gives us  of the
> pterasaurs  is  basically  ludicrous.   You get this picture of a
> giant flying reptile, making it's home in cliffs, using its 5 mph
> stall speed  to spread  its wings  into the wind and take off and
> soar.  The problem with  all  this?   It's  wouldn't  be  able to
> capture airborne  prey at  5mph;   it would  have to  have been a
> prehistoric vulture.  But you don't find many dead animals in the
> cliffs.  It would have had to descend to the valleys and lowlands
> to find dead animals, land, eat them (and presumably gain several
> pounds in  the process), and then what?  Especially on a windless
> day (I still need to eat on windless days, and I am  assuming the
> pterosaurs did).  Remember, albatrosses today can barely take off
> at thirty pounds.  The pterosaur's only hope in life was Immanuel
> Velikovsky and  David Talbott's  theory regarding lesser gravity.

I can't count the fallacies in this argument.  A stall speed of 5 mph is
not like a governor.  The prey need not have been airborne: they may have
been fish-eaters like ospreys and some eagles, owls, and bats, in which
case they likely would not have landed.  In many areas, winds are regular
and predictable.  I'm sure you wouldn't starve despite an occaisional
windless day.

>      Likewise, gravity  being what  it is  today, nothing evolves
> into  a  state  in  which  it  can  only waddle, shuffle, hobble,
> flounder, or glide with no  possibility  of  powered  flight when
> needed.   Simple  Darwinian  principles  prevent  that.  Anything
> tending in that direction perishes long before it  could think in
> terms of new species.

Apparently you've never heard of tortoises.  Or flying squirrels, phalangers,
snakes, frogs, and lizards.  Or flightless parrots.  Or kiwis.  Or a zillion
other extant examples.

>                Consider  that  no  instance  is  known of an entire species
>           being exterminated from a  major  continent  in  recorded history
>           other than at the hand of man, and that only recently, within the
>           last  several  hundred  years.   Ancient  man   had  neither  the
>           capability  nor  the  inclination  for  such  feats.  Most of the
>           cases of species extermination which  science  books  like  to go
>           over occured on islands.

If ancient man could exterminate species on islands, why not on continents?
Take for example the moas of New Zealand.  They were huge, yet exterminated
by the aborigines with stone-age weapons before the Europeans arrived.  Nor
is New Zealand small.

If species have been exterminated from continents by the hand of man in
recorded history (such as the auroch, long before guns), then why not
during prehistory?
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh