What drove bird evolution?

>But the article you posted is talking about the Mars effect.Once somebody's been shown to be an ideologue and a liar, you don't have to go on checking his pronouncements...

While I agree you have to take someones pronouncements with more an more skepticism you can't throw everything out with one mistake. As more and more "mistakes" are made you might decide to stop bothering with a particular source, of course.We still discuss the pronouncements of the ICR and AIG even though they seem to be deliberately misleading a great deal of the time.This message has been edited by AdminNosy, 07-17-2004 01:50 PM

There's no such dinosaur. As someone once said "Once somebody's been shown to be an ideologue and a liar, you don't have to go on checking his pronouncements... " Oh, right - just like this picture must be fake:After all, holding that arm out must involve millions of foot-pounds of torque. That's simply not possible under our current gravity, right? Then what is that a picture of?

The problem is, these aren't the pronouncements of CSICOP. They were merely compiled by that organization.These are the sources you must rebut:

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References
Anonymous. 1975. "Confront: . . . Las hizo Basilio Uchuya." Mundial, No. 6, January 17.

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Cabrera Darquea, Javier. No date. The Message of the Engraved Stones of Ica. Ica: Privately Printed.

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Carroll, Robert Todd. 2002. "The Ica Stones," in: The Skeptic's Dictionary (skepdic.com/icastones.html).

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Chauvet, Jean-Marie, Eliette Brunel-Deschamps, and Christian Hillaire. 1996. Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave: The Oldest Known Paintings in the World. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

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Polidoro, Massimo. 2002. "A Pterodactyl in the Civil War." Skeptical Inquirer, 26(3), May/June 2002: 21-23.

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[joke]Of course, as you can clearly see from the picture, that crane is only a few centimeters high![/joke]In case someone is doubting his numbers, I figure I'd look it up and provide some more details than just "millions".One of the (maybe THE largest) cranes currently in commersial use is the K-10000 crane developed in the 80's. It can safely handle a load of up to ~16 million foot-pounds (or ~106M Newton-meters for us normal people). Several of these cranes have been used for years.Sources:Largest tower crane in the World - 100 tons at 100 meter radius - Diagram over crane as well as details
HTTP 404 - page not found - General history of developers of the crane
http://ecolu-info.unige.ch/archives/ceeman02/0068.html - One crane for sale, also includes a photo of an erect crane

Mechanical cranes have the structural support (cables) to handle large torque loads. A sauropod dinosaur's neck did not.

But they did have tendons and musculature which could effectively act as cables...

That's simply a false claim. Sauropod necks did indeed have structural cables to handle those torque loads. They're called "tendons."So, we're pretty much back to where we were in the other thread. I predict you'll stop responding to my posts because that's exactly what you did the last time we got to this point - I had destroyed your sauropod claim, and you had no rebuttal except to mention how you don't talk to idiots, or some such.Does it ever bother you that what is apparently your life's work can be so easily destroyed by punk kids on the internet with no college degree, like myself? Man, that would burn me up.

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That's simply a false claim. Sauropod necks did indeed have structural cables to handle those torque loads. They're called "tendons."

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Take a look at the cranes, the difference is pretty obvious. The tendons would have to be attached to a bone spur ten or twelve feet over the top of the dinosaur's shoulder for that to work.

Somebody's been watching too much Flintstones. Sauropods aren't cranes; unlike the cranes they had no need to cantilever enormous loads at the end of their necks, so they wouldn't need a "10 to 12 foot spur."The bony crest that they did have would have been more than sufficient:

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So not alone are you very ignorant of Evolution; rather simple physics concepts also escapes you. Should I conclude that you really don't know ANY science?

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Don't act surprised when you find your comments being ignored...

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Don't act surprised when you find your false claims and misrepresentations challenged.

The problem might be a little easier to comprhend looking at something other than a best possible case. The seismosaur's neck probably weighed between 30K and 50K lbs, and the center of gravity of that neck would have been 15' - 20' out from the shoulders. That's too much torque. No building inspector in America could be bribed sufficiently to let you build something like that out of structural materials, much less flesh and bone.To support that much weight, you'd need supports on both sides and the neck piece would have to arch upwards. The seismosaur's neck arches the wrong way, i.e. downwards, and is only supported on one end. In our gravity, that can't work.

No marks are given for the answer to this math problem. Please show your work.I would suggest that your weight figures are about the right order of magnitude but it seems to be a couple of times bigger than I might guess.

What, says you? As the man said:

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Once somebody's been shown to be an ideologue and a liar, you don't have to go on checking his pronouncements...

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Boring, RW. If all you have are empty pronouncements that "it simply can't be so!", all you've done is present a cynical argument from personal incredulity.

redwolf Let's see a seismosaur weighs up to 150 tons which translates to 300K lbs. This means that you are stating the head of the beast weighs 10% -15% OF THE BODY WEIGHT.Take a close look at the head in relation to the rest of the body and ask yourself if perhaps you woud like to give a new more reasonable estimate.It would not hurt to do a calculation showing your work and allow us to see it.