Posted on 02/27/2002 10:29:03 AM PST by RoughDobermann
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:00:10 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
STANFORD, California (CNN) -- New models of the leg muscles of Tyrannosaurus Rex suggest that a real T-Rex might not have passed the screen test for "Jurassic Park." Stanford University researchers writing in the British journal Nature this week suggest that a T-Rex could not have been able to run as fast as the one in the movie -- and might not have been able to run at all.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Where you his property all along, or did he force you to sign some kind of paperwork after you lost control over him?
Unless you can cite a real science source for this, I have to raise the BS detector flag.
Oh, they did. Agincourt in 1415 is a good example of the shortcomings of the heavy mounted knight, though. Henry V, with a force of about 6,000 mostly lightly-armed archers, met a French force of about 25,000, mostly armored cavalry and some infantry. The combination of the English longbowmen and the extremely muddy conditions of the battle (and the fact that the French couldn't agree on who was supposed to be leading them) meant that, when all was said and done, Henry had taken about 200 casualties, and the French, nearly 6,000. Once the knights were unhorsed, they were in serious danger - the mud made it difficult to get back up, especially with others on top of you. So they were particularly vulnerable to the English footmen rushing in to slip a dagger between the joints of their armor. And probably for as many as were killed by the English, there were just as many who literally drowned in the mud.
That lack of mobility you cite was also apparent during the Crusades - the light cavalry of the Saracens gave the Euros fits. The Mongols, et cetera, did indeed use a different style of warfare, but that was the European model. With the introduction of the longbow, and later the cannon, the days of the heavy mounted knight were definitely numbered - by the late 15'th century, they were pretty much gone, abandoned in favor of archers, light infantry, and some much lighter cavalry.
There were monstrosities like this ca. 1450 Italian piece, but realistically, they were hugely expensive, and beyond the reach of most knights - having such a thing would be very much a status symbol, and would have been pretty rare. Besides, by the time full-blown horse armor like that was being deployed, the heavy mounted knight was, again, on his way to extinction anyway.
My peers, or yours?
Now, by about 10:00 or so, Henry got rather tired of waiting for the French to figure out what they were going to do, so he had his archers move up on the field, so as to be closer to the French. There, they set up their stakes that they used to defend themselves against cavalry charges, and loosed a few flights of arrows at the French. At that point, the French broke out in a completely disorganized charge towards the English, across this sea of mud, and straight into the stakes that the English archers had set up.
IMO, the role of the longbow is somewhat overblown, particularly by English historians. It will penetrate armor nicely, but it has to be done at fairly close range to do so. The real culprit at Agincourt was the French arrogance and disorganization. But, what goes around comes around - a generation later, the French would have much more success against the English...
Hmmmm. I wonder if their computer models are more accurate than those used to "predict" weather trends far into the future that will cause "global warming," yet can't "predict" weather that's already happened?
That is simply a straw man argument, Finding out if a long extinct animal had the ability to run, is not comparable with human invention of a device. Devices being created can be used to invent other items, which can have a quantifiable benefit to mankind...
So I say again, what good is the knowledge of how t-rex "may" have moved when it contributes nothing to invention or making our lives any better.
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