'Biggest dinosaur ever'

Tingtangmakadingdong said:
'Technically they don't and it's guess work' was the response I got when I asked that particular question at the Natural History Museum when I was 10 .
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That's a highly simplified answer for a child. Which is fine, since you were a child at the time.

It's not a guess. It's an assessment of probabilities based on extrapolation from known information.

People know some information about how skeletons of living animals can and can't fit together, some information about how the size and shape of bones relates to the forces imposed on them by the weight and movement of the animal, some information about how the size and shape of parts of bones relates to the muscles attached to them, etc. Combining the known information with fossilised bones from an animal makes it possible to extrapolate to the most probable structure of the animal. In some cases, it's pretty much certain. In others, less so (e.g. some areas of soft tissue or some details about animals for which only a few seperated bones have been found).
 
mrk said:
Having been watching Bones since day 1 It's always been fascinating reading about findings like this. For anyone interested, Bones is actually as accurate as can be made for TV, unlike other shows Bones goes into intricate detail and it's creators fact check virtually everything.

http://www.wired.com/2011/11/tv-fact-checker-bones/
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I may start watching Bones because of that.

I listened to an interview with Bernard Knight recently. He's a forensic pathologist who's written a series of books I particularly like about a coroner in the time when the first modern coroners were appointed in England (late 1194). Fiction, but he takes care with accuracy. He was asked whether he watched any of what was then the quite new genre of TV shows based on forensics and he said he didn't because they were so inaccurate. I've watched some CSI and NCIS and even though I know next to nothing about forensics I see silly inaccuracies. They must be horribly grating to an expert.
 
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I want to see that dog that buried that!!
 
Orionaut said:
I wonder if there is any way of working out how long these animals lived?
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Yes, bones have growth patterns that indicate rates of growth.

AIUI, the rationale behind the vegetarian sauropods was that the food was very poor and hard to digest, hence you needed a big stomach to digest it. But, at the same time, that would (To me anyways) seem to indicate indicate relatively slow growth.
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The growth rate was astoundingly fast, up to 5 tonnes a year in Apatosaurus according to some estimates, while others suggest closer to half a tonne a year (source, full text pay-walled, regrettably).
 
Angilion said:
I may start watching Bones because of that.

I listened to an interview with Bernard Knight recently. He's a forensic pathologist who's written a series of books I particularly like about a coroner in the time when the first modern coroners were appointed in England (late 1194). Fiction, but he takes care with accuracy. He was asked whether he watched any of what was then the quite new genre of TV shows based on forensics and he said he didn't because they were so inaccurate. I've watched some CSI and NCIS and even though I know next to nothing about forensics I see silly inaccuracies. They must be horribly grating to an expert.
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I've been watching CSI (all variants) since day 1 also and in fact watch any kind of show like this, I just love them. Anyway, CSI (Vegas) does do the Science accurately, there have been various articles and interviews where the producers tell viewers how far into the Science they delve in order to make it accurate. The parts of this show that remain completely fabricated are things like the infamous "CSI ENHANCE!!!" scenes where they remove blur from a CCTV screengrab in order to read a car license plate or buttons and computers that make noises which certainly don't in real life or other exotic computer/internet based things that simply aren't accurate. Also things like torches that make a noise like a flashgun powering up when turned on are complete LOL. There's just no need for that considering the kind of people who are watching this show know what's what.

CSI: NY and Miami just go overboard and are worth binning. Vegas at least focuses on the Science and characters are more interesting.

Bones is different though, definitely grab a hold of season 1 and go from there, think you will enjoy it and the characters are brilliant too :)
 
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Boring as they still ignore the giant people bones they find ! :rolleyes:

Why where they so big? Because gravity was less than it is now. Nothing
mistical or fairy land just the planet was less dense therefore bigger animals.

Gravity dictates size of animals. ;)
 
itchy said:
Boring as they still ignore the giant people bones they find ! :rolleyes:

Why where they so big? Because gravity was less than it is now. Nothing
mistical or fairy land just the planet was less dense therefore bigger animals.

Gravity dictates size of animals. ;)
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yeah......

i mean no.
 
itchy said:
Boring as they still ignore the giant people bones they find ! :rolleyes:

Why where they so big? Because gravity was less than it is now. Nothing
mistical or fairy land just the planet was less dense therefore bigger animals.

Gravity dictates size of animals. ;)
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Was there not a crazy amount of trees with less Carbon Dioxide levels back then?
 
Johnnytoxic said:
Was there not a crazy amount of trees with less Carbon Dioxide levels back then?
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Much much higher Oxygen levels. If you plonked a one of these large dinosaurs on us now it would probably suffocate to death. Even a T-Rex would be useless as he would run out of breath as soon as he moved
 
Orionaut said:
I wonder if there is any way of working out how long these animals lived?

AIUI, the rationale behind the vegetarian sauropods was that the food was very poor and hard to digest, hence you needed a big stomach to digest it. But, at the same time, that would (To me anyways) seem to indicate indicate relatively slow growth.

How long did it take to get to 100 Tons eating ferns and cycads??
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Elephants spend >90% of their time eating and they can gain at most about 1 tonne a year. I'm thinking along the same lines as you - it seems likely to me that it would take a considerable amount of time for a herbivore to grow to 100 tonnes. 1 tonne a year is rather rapid growth.
 
mrk said:
I've been watching CSI (all variants) since day 1 also and in fact watch any kind of show like this, I just love them. Anyway, CSI (Vegas) does do the Science accurately, there have been various articles and interviews where the producers tell viewers how far into the Science they delve in order to make it accurate. The parts of this show that remain completely fabricated are things like the infamous "CSI ENHANCE!!!" scenes where they remove blur from a CCTV screengrab in order to read a car license plate or buttons and computers that make noises which certainly don't in real life or other exotic computer/internet based things that simply aren't accurate. Also things like torches that make a noise like a flashgun powering up when turned on are complete LOL. There's just no need for that considering the kind of people who are watching this show know what's what. [..]
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I'm also watching CSI Vegas and I'm seeing rather more inaccuracies. CSI in charge of a crime scene? No. CSI processing crime scenes in jeans and T-shirts and street shoes, contaminating evidence all over the place? No. A pair of gloves is nowhere near enough by itself. CSI questioning suspects? No. Warrants are largely optional? No. Standing on evidence while photographing it? No. I've even seen them tasting evidence!

I find it an entertaining program, but it's far from accurate. Things like magic testing that takes a 1/100th of the time really takes are understandable and expected ("We'll get the DNA results in 3 days if we're lucky and get priority at the lab" would be difficult to work into every episode) but it wouldn't ruin things to, for example, have the CSI people dressed more accurately when processing a crime scene.

The noises are hilarious, I agree. I'm almost sure I heard their computers making 1950s-style magnetic reel noises while working. Even just displaying an image results in clicks and whirrs. Although they do have magic computers (as shown by their image and audio processing capablities), so maybe magic computers are noisy :)
 
Mr Jack said:
You can't date dinosaur bones; it's not possible. Instead you date the rocks above/below them and use these dates to approximate the date of the bones. Only volcanic rocks can be radiodated (which is the most accurate method); sedimentary rocks can be dated on the basis of certain 'index' fossils of widespread organisms that existed for geographically short periods of time. Dates obtained from other sites containing these index fossils can then be used to give a calibrated date to your rocks.
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So you date the bones by the rocks they're found in and you date the rock by the bones found in them ... That sounds really accurate!
 
jcr said:
So you date the bones by the rocks they're found in and you date the rock by the bones found in them ... That sounds really accurate!
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No, you date them by different fossils found in them (and they're not bones, they're shells: index fossils are universally small sea-living creatures). Those fossils are only ever found in rocks of a particular age. This record gave us a relative dating scale centuries ago, and has proved both reliable and predictive. More recently radio-dating methods have allowed us to date these sedimentary layers by dating igneous rocks above and below them. These absolute dates remain consistent with the relative ages worked out long ago.

Since dinosaur bones cannot be directly dated they can only be dated by dating the rocks in which they lie. If these sedimentary rocks are of the right type, they can be directly dated by using index fossils; otherwise the date is derived from strata found above/below the bones using either radio-dating or index fossils or a combination of both.
 
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