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To: Junior

You're saying that the velociraptor is Bigger than a man, weighs less and therefore should be above the man by weight.
Your assumption is based on what - as weight goes. If you're right about the weight, then your conclusion is well founded. If you are not, lets just say, at .2 meters bigger than the average man and given the weight of gators, I don't find it credible that a Raptor would weigh less than a man. Nor would I base my conclusions on single instances with regard to the fossil record. By and large, the sorting of fossils is far more indicative of bouyancy sorting. The sorting of the strata can also be accounted for in this manner along with the difference in the strata world wide.


285 posted on 08/03/2004 3:46:30 PM PDT by Havoc (.)
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To: Havoc; Junior
Nor would I base my conclusions on single instances with regard to the fossil record. By and large, the sorting of fossils is far more indicative of bouyancy sorting. The sorting of the strata can also be accounted for in this manner along with the difference in the strata world wide.

Utter twaddle. There is a 100 year old principle called Cope's Law (only a Law, which scientifically means it isn't as firmly established as a Theory - but is nevertheless a good statement on how the real world works) that states that over evolutionary time related animals tend to increase in size.

In evolutionary terms this makes sense: bigger anumals usually have an advantage in survival and breeding and so have a reproductive advantage.

But "bouyancy sorting" says that fossils of the same shape, structure, density should sort out with the largest on the bottom of the fossil record, if it was constructed in one "Flood Event" - which thus falsified.

338 posted on 08/03/2004 9:51:28 PM PDT by Oztrich Boy ("Despise not the jester. Often he is the only one speaking the truth")
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To: Havoc
Velociraptors are built like birds. Their skeletons are thinner and lighter. A 2-meter raptor includes one meter of tail, so the actual animal is the size of a large dog. The best estimates place the critter in the 45-kg range -- big enough to be classed as megafauna.

If you'd like, we can go with the smaller dinos. Some were the size of chickens (~5 kg); many were smaller. The big guys (T. Rex @~6 tonnes, Triceratops @~5 tonnes, the sauropods @ 20-150 tonnes) always get the top billing because they are so impressive. Most of these critters, however, were less than 100 kgs in size.

Let's take it a step further. The largest land mammal that ever existed was the Indricotherium at about 20 tonnes -- or the size of four African elephants. That's the size of the smaller sauropods, and larger than just about every other dinosaur that existed, and yet it wasn't "buoyancy sorted" with them, but with later mammals. We could go on with mammals such as the megatherium (7 tonnes), the titanothere (6 tonnes), the Columbian Mammoth (7 tonnes) -- all comparable to dinosaurs in size, but never found mixed with the latters' bones.

Oh, and then we have the lovely terror birds that cropped up shortly after the demise of the dinosaurs, with some species actually hanging on until a couple of million years ago. These flightless birds ranged up to 4-meters in height and between 50 and 300 kgs (birds are built a bit lighter) -- and yet they are not found mixed with dinos or with more recent remains, regardless of size.

And, let's not even get started on the fish, aquatic reptiles (they weren't dinosaurs) or aquatic mammals, that magically sort themselves out in the fossil record in a manner reminiscent of vast scales of time and not "buoyancy sorting."

Methinks you are not really researching any of your arguments and are simply parroting what someone wrote on a creationist web page. Next time you do a web search, ditch the creationist sites. They are notoriously light on science. Go for things with .edu extensions. It's there that you will find most of the actual research being done in any given field (creationist "researchers" typically skim these sites for the odd out-of-context quote they can mine to bolster their untenable positions. Eliminate the middleman and go there yourself). I also find the science and nature sections of any good bookstore to be a wealth of information, expecially for a megafauna fanatic such as myself.

341 posted on 08/04/2004 3:32:19 AM PDT by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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