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Hogwash. Utter ridiculous nonsense, and you people ought to be ashamed of yourselves, if you were even capable of shame, which obviously, you're not. That makes you lesser forms of human beings, pal.

So don't be putting on "superior" airs...

The ONLY ONE who should be ashamed and who is putting superior airs and spreading insults on this thread appears to be you. . . and there is no need to use ad hominem attack and insults to make your repeated points. "Lesser forms of human beings" and "pal" will not get you far with me or any others if you want to get attention for your points. I have an IQ of over 150 and can read quite well, so quit repeating your same tired arguments. We already know what they are. I also tutored in mathematic, physics, and biology in college many years ago, so don't try to school me.Try addressing the points we make substantially, not just repeating the fact that the evidence in hand exists. . . not one of us has disputed that or the dates of those creatures. That makes them red herrings to the point at issue. Our evidence does as well. . . and is based in solid fact.

First of all, as pointed out on this thread numerous times we have fossils of four-legged land-critters which grew over your magical 20,000 lb. limit not only from the age of Dinosaurs (65+ mya) but also the Oligocene (circa 25 mya) and even the current Holocene (10,000 bp).

As to there being large animal in the fossil record? We very obviously know. Repetition does not improve your argument. . . Nor have you shown us any counter evidence to show anything disproving the cube/square law, the limits on the chemical engine that powers animal muscles. Instead you keep pointing out examples of NON-modern animals that are now extinct for unknown reasons as examples that exceed the theoretical one G maximum.

Bigger beasts require bigger bones -- there's no magic to it, no fantasy "weight limit" and no change in gravity required, just bigger bones & muscles.

You just continue to fail to grasp the cube-square law. . . Notice it is a "law."

The Cube-Square Law states the volume (and mass of a solid object) of a structure increases with the cube of its linear dimensions whereas its surface area increases with the square of its linear dimension. Not only is the Square Cube Law helpful with movie monsters, it's helpful with mathematical proportions, engineering, biomechanics, astronomy and other science categories filled with math.

It applies to any object that increases in size. As an animal doubles in size, BroJoeK, the area of its skin covered increases by the square as does the cross section of the area of muscle, the mass of bone and muscle increases by the CUBE. . . and the bones have to grow far larger than just double to support that mass. Very rapidly as that mass increases, the bones and muscles to move them must a priori become so large! that no muscles can move them. . . and the sheer amount of energy required plus blood flow with oxygen cannot be delivered. The total weight of the animal is actually somewhat less than the theoretical cube because the empty species inside—that weigh essentially nothing—such as lungs, empty bladders, intestines, nasal cavities, cysts, etc., also increase in size by the cube, but the principle is the same.

Second, all the calculations I've seen here are based on the weight lifting capacity of two-legged human beings, not four-legged slow-moving herbivorous beasts.

So, if you compare bone sizes of today's humans & elephants with those ancient beasts, you instantly see that they are scaled up to allow for their heavier weights. Bigger beasts require bigger bones -- there's no magic to it, no fantasy "weight limit" and no change in gravity required, just bigger bones & muscles.

Do you really think that two-legged human muscle four-legged human muscle are somehow qualitatively different? Bullpucky! If anything, millennia of evolution may have improved human joints but a trained human athlete practiced at lifting is better adapted and skilled at lifting his own and a dead weight than any wild animal, especially an athlete that has perhaps toned the muscles to the peak of its efficiency. We know where it stops working. We can also artificially stimulate muscle tissue electrically beyond what a willing human subject can make it to do and actually measure the physical force or work it can produce per square centimeter. This turns out to be close to the same regardless of species. There is only so much contraction the chemical reaction and strength of the fibers can produce over so much time. Those are the sticky things we call FACTS!

Third, real scientists (not phony-baloney nonsense peddlers) have actually studied this question, doing computer models based on sizes & weights estimated, and found them to work just fine, even up to 100 tons.

And, the problem over 100 tons is not bones or muscles, but rather joint strength, a matter about which the fossil record necessarily says very little.

No, they have not. Show me how a 65 foot neck made of bone, sinew and muscle weighing 50,000 pounds or so can be supported cantilevered at one G much less lifted and maneuvered quickly through a wide range of motion. Now demonstrate moving large amounts of low-grade carbohydrate vegetable matter down a 70 foot esophagus in sufficient quantities to supply. 100-200 ton body on a daily basis while moving that body around to forage FOR that large amount of vegetable matter. Frankly, it really has not been considered in depth. It's been assumed as possible. . . Because we have the prima facie evidence of the existence of the fossils.

BroJoeK, research and the math has been done on this but if YOU want to look the other way and sweep this under the rug, fine. It is cutting edge questions such as this where REAL science is made. Not where YOU ARE, assuming that it's all been discovered. In light of these emerging data and problems with the issues of muscle energy, Paleontologists are trying to lighten their estimates of the weights of these animals. . . but no matter how hard they try, they cannot lighten them enough. There is no such thing as "settled science" but they don't want to rewrite the text books. . . and have to rethink the steady state cosmology this would require.

Third, real scientists (not phony-baloney nonsense peddlers)
***I see this argument over and over again. It’s baloney.

If someone has a PhD in a field, they should be proud of it and post out in the open rather than anonymously. The reason they don’t is because they know they might be proven wrong, and their livelihood is placed in jeopardy.

That is the whole reason why Fellowships were established. So scientists could pursue whatever they wanted without being hounded out of their profession. But that has simply not been the case with several fields such as LENR. Science is in complete disarray because scientists cannot be trusted.

It isn't just muscle which varies as a square, it's basically every measure of efficiency. Surface area of wings is a squared figure, surface area of lungs (your ability to breathe) is a squared figure, body surface (your ability to throw off excess heat) is a squared figure...

All of those things impose size limits and not just for dinosaurs. The size limit for pretty nearly every sort of thing was substantially greater in the recent past. Ten thousand years ago (by stand reckoning of time) there was a 2500 lb bear in California, a 1500 lb lion, a 700 lb beaver in Minnesota...

But the worst problem involved the necks of the diplodocids (the sauropods which held their necks outwards). For something like a seismosaur, you could easily be looking at a neck which was 50+ ft. long and weighed 50,000 lbs. If the center of gravity of that neck was even 15' from the shoulders, you'c be talking about 750,000 foot pounds of torque, and trying to hold that with muscle tissue...

That's basically crazy. To my knowledge, there is no screw or bolt on anything in the world which requires more than a few thousand foot pounds of torque. The only thing in the world which would correspond to half a million foot pounds of torque or anything like that would be the combined max torque of all of the engines of the Yamato or the Musashi or some such.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00137.x/pdf Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism

Real scientists, not crackpots, really demolishing your anti-scientific piffle.

The square/cube law, like the Young Earther's typical, thoroughly hilarious, misapplication of the Second Law of Thermodyanmics, does not "prove" anything.

I will be tied up for awhile, and will answer your posts in detail when time permits.

Sorry for the hiatus, so let's pick up where we left off...

Swordmaker: "You just continue to fail to grasp the cube-square law. . . Notice it is a 'law.' "

A little googling turns up some sources for all this laughable nonsense:

The Paradox of Large Dinosaurs (The New Science) -- 2010, 17 pages, Kindle: $3.

Galileo's Square-Cube Law (The New Science) -- 2010, 22 pages Kindle: $3.

The Science of Flight and the Paradox of Flying Pterosaurs (The New Science) -- 2010, 36 pages, Kindle: $3.

An appropriate & detailed response to Esker's sauropod arguments is this:
Biology of the Sauropod Dinosaurs: Understanding the Life of Giants (Life of the Past) -- 2011, 348 pages, Kindle: $38

For Esker's Pterosaur arguments, we can begin here:
Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy -- 2013, 304 pages, Kindle $19

Alamo-Girl, in post #113 above, Swordmaker implies that the largest flying birds today -- "Albatross with an up to 11 foot wingspan and weigh only 30 lbs" -- are the largest birds which can fly.
In response I noted that the Kori Bustard's nine-foot wing span can lift its 44 pounds off the ground.
But even more important to flight is not the wing-span alone versus bird-weight.
Rather, it's the wing-load -- pounds per square foot of wing, and the rule of thumb for birds is: 5 lbs per square foot of wing.
So, if we take the largest bird which ever lived, Argentavis, with max 26 foot wings lifting 176 lbs.
Those wings needed to be less than 1.5 feet wide to produce the 5 lbs/sq foot required for flight:

There is more to be responded to here, and I will return to it later, but let's end now with this idea:
Nobody seriously objects to what you decide is "real" or "not-real" in your own life.
For example, if you decide that Tolkien's Hobbits are "real" creatures that live in Hobbit-holes, or if you believe in a "galaxy long ago and far away" where young Skywalker could "feeeel the force" -- I say all well and good, especially since those are generally moral, uplifting stories.

But, but, but... if you pretend such beliefs have something to do with "science", now you are trespassing onto posted land, and there you must respect the rights of the owners: real scientists.

Swordmaker: "They had to drop the neck to parallel to the ground, again because of the issues brought up by the people YOU ARE DENIGRATING, trying any way possible to limit the damage and find answers"

All three of Esker's short books were published in 2010, and all of the responses I've listed here came subsequently.
But, exactly how much "credit" Esker deserves for stimulating real science is impossible to say.
What's the term for that logical fallacy?
"Post hoc ergo propter hoc".