Gwangi Valley - Lost Blog of the Gwangi

The world is full of misunderstandings. The rhino’s horn is misunderstood; it’s not a bone nor is it made of hair*. Chewing gum does not stay in your body for years**. And there are a number of myths about dinosaurs and ancient reptiles, as well, that need some airing out.

Fallacy: Pterosaurs couldn’t possibly have flown. They were too big.

Reality:
Not by a long shot.. Scientists studying these flying reptiles agree that they did indeed fly. In fact, pterosaurs would have been quite capable flyers. Their bone structure, was strong enough, the wings of some or all contained actinofibrillae, a fibrous development that insured that their wings did not tear from the stress of flying and some of them had a skeletal system that was specially adapted to absorb the impact of landing.

Weight: What most naysayers don’t bother to point out is that even a large pteranodon with, let’s say, a 20 foot wingspan, would likely weigh no more than around 25 pounds! Pterosaurs had large diameter hollow bones which were both strong and light, the same design principle we use to build ultra-light aircraft today. Nature just beat us to it.

Size: Were there larger pterosaurs? Absolutely. Pterosaurs ranged from the size of very small birds, up to the immense Quetzlcoatlus which, while huge with up to a forty foot wingspan, was still within the bounds of being acceptably flight-capable. If someone merely looks at the wingspan of a fossil and says “that couldn’t fly”. That’s not science. But, it bears repeating, many pterosaurs were no larger than the large birds we’ve observed in the modern world. Pterosaurs flew, we’ve no doubt of this.

If someone says they read this fallacious notion about pterosaurs being unable to fly in a book… they need to find a better, more up-to-date library. Science and paleontologists _do not_ believe the pterosaurs were too large to fly. Period.

Pseudoscience Tie-in:
Kooks who believe that the Earth is growing, against all measurable and observable evidence to the contrary, argue that the Earth must have been smaller and gravity lower for these beasts to have flown. But they then conveniently ignore the difference in air density which would have required the pterosaurs to actually produce more lift, not less, to fly and they turn a blind eye to the fact that the largest pterosaurs came later, not earlier, as their theory would require. And these flying reptiles weren’t just around for a short period either, they were around for millions of years! The Mesozoic period lasted around 180 million years, and pterosaurs were around for nearly all of it. If the real world followed the model put forth by these expanding Earth buffoons, the large pterosaurs could not have existed as long as they did and certainly would not have grown larger if it were harder and harder to fly as time went on.

Fallacy: OK, but large dinosaurs were too large to support their own weight. And T. Rex would not be able to run.

Reality:
There is not one dinosaur we’re aware of that was too massive for its own skeleton and musculature to support. None. This common misconception seems to arise simply because people are often so taken aback by the sheer bulk of, say, an apatosaur that they just can’t conceive of such a weight being supported naturally. This incredulity is what led early to ideas early on that these gigantic creatures must have lived their lives in water so as to buoy up their enormous stature. This is not the case. Nature, it turns out, is much more clever than we are and the large dinosaurs could stand and walk just fine, thank you.

It’s worth pointing out in no uncertain terms, since this is often touted as ‘evidence’, that it’s not just a matter of placing the animals weight directly on its bones and seeing if they give. That’s not the way it works. The musculature around them is equally as important as the bones in both lifting and supporting body mass.

Pseudoscience Tie-in: One of those expanding Earth kooks, as mentioned above, is called Neal Adams. He’s a fantastic comics book artist who happens to also be a complete crackpot. He has claimed that Tyrannosaurus Rex would not be able to function as a predator in standard Earth gravity and must have lived on a smaller, lower gravity Earth that has since grown to where it is now (he says that it grows 6 to 24 inches a year - yet no scientifically conducted measurements of the planet have ever given the slightest indication of any expansion over time).

He also claimed to have read ’somewhere’ that studies showed a “Teracarnasaurus” (he means carnosaur or carnosaurus, of which T. Rex is one) would have to have 90% of its mass as leg muscle in order to just walk at 10 MPH. No such study exists, however. And the one he is likely referring to is quite clear in stating that not only could T. Rex run, that some therapods were likely pretty spry as well. His other main argument is that, since he draws a lot of anatomy, he’s therefore uniquely qualified to figure out a T. Rex’s running abilities based on his comic book career. And, what do you know, his speculation fits right into his expanding Earth notions.

Fallacy: Humans could have lived alongside dinosaurs long ago. I saw it in a museum in Kentucky.

Reality:
Despite what you may have heard from those very same people who run this creation museum, our methods for dating fossils are incredibly robust and, quite frankly, more provably accurate than the nonsense the creation museum people attempt to assert as indicative of reality. We’re quite damned certain that dinosaurs died off around 65 million years ago. And we’re quite damned certain that the genus Homo, of which we are a part, didn’t arise until around 2.5 million years ago. Modern human beings, homo sapiens, the only existing species of the Homo line, is only about 130,000 to 200,000 years old.

The only people questioning the accuracy of radiation dating methods is those who have a vested interest in forcing reality to fit into the framework of a literal interpretation of the scriptures of their religion.

And every damned one of them should turn in their cell phone, microwave, television, pacemaker and digital camera. If they don’t believe in the science behind rates of decay, they don’t believe in the science that makes those devices work. And they need to stay ought of modern hospitals, too. No MRIs, CT scans or the like for you young Earth proponents. You can’t have it both ways.

Fallacy: Crocodiles and alligators are modern day dinosaurs

Reality:
Sorry. This one sounds cool, but it’s not true. Crocodiles and alligators are reptiles. Dinosaurs and reptiles are two distinct things. Pterosaurs were also flying reptiles, as were plesiosaurs and pliosaurs, marine reptile species of the dinosaur age. All true dinosaurs were land dwellers. They did, however, all evolve from a common ancestor, the archosaur. (We tend to lump in animals like the pterosaurs because they, like the dinosaurs, do not exist past the K-T boundary.)

But don’t despair. There’s still a huge cool factor here. While they may not be dinosaurs, crocodiles were around back then and have changed, overall, very little. So they may not be dinosaurs, but their ancestors walked among them. That’s still pretty cool.

Fallacy: All the dinosaurs died suddenly 65 million years ago.

Reality:
No. Not all. Many dinosaurs died off earlier. One needs to keep in mind that the era of dinosaurs, and indeed a plethora of varying types, extends over some 165 million years. This is a long time, I’m sure you’ll agree. There was a rich pageant of life that arose and died during that time.

Around 200 million years ago, the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event killed off a great many archosaurs, marine animals and the truly large amphibians. 51 million years before that, the largest extinction the Earth has ever known occurred; the Permian-Triassic extinction. So, as you can see, extinction is a part of the ebb and flow of life on Earth, even for dinosaurs. And, once again, let’s not forget just how long a period of time we’re talking about. A lot can happen in 165 million years.

However, to the question at hand, it is true that some time around 65 million years ago, a cataclysmic extinction occurred, and the remaining dinosaurs were wiped out. The K/T extinction event is very real and, on a geological scale, did happen very quickly and the K/T boundary is where we say “dinosaurs were completely extinct as of here”. But not all dinosaurs died then, only, well… those who had survived earlier extinctions (or hadn’t even been around for them!).

Finally: This blog post was begun with the intention of not only clearing up some fallacies, but also to point out what a loon Neal Adams is.

Reality:
This one’s actually true. I particularly dislike his brand of crazy and any bit of refutation of his outlandish notions is, I feel, time well spent. There’s no doubt that Adams is a brilliant comic artist (his Batman is often cited as bringing the franchise back to life) and that he has done worthy things in that realm (helping insure that the creators of Superman were justly compensated in later years), but his credibility in that arena does not extend to his notions on science and his contention that, well, pretty much everything we know about physics is wrong and his ideas are right.

Playing off his name and his nice animations, he’s managed to dredge up an old idea, long ago debunked, and use Youtube and other arenas to spread his ridiculous notions. But like most quacks, he has, of course, not produced a shred of credible evidence apart from a lot of words, many of which are repeatedly refuted yet he seems not to notice or care, and some well-executed animations. He promises, but never delievers much beyond arguments and more pretty pictures proving nothing. And that’s not science, either, folks.

* - It’s made of keratin and is not attached to the skull.
** - It makes the trip through your digestive system just as you would expect.