Why Were the Dinosaurs so Large?

Why were the dinosaurs so large?

Under higher gravity animals would be smaller, because it would be too difficult to resist the higher gravitational force. For this reason sea-going animals tend to be larger than their terrestrial cousins. Likely dinosaurs were large because of increased oxygen in the atmosphere. Herbivores need to ferment their meals but do fine today being no larger than elephants.

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Walk the Dinosaur

"Walk the Dinosaur" is a song by Was (Not Was), released in 1987, from their album, What Up, Dog?

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St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site

The St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site is a fossil site and museum at Johnson Farm in Saint George, Utah. The museum preserves thousands of dinosaur footprints right at the original site of discovery. The site was discovered by accident on February 26, 2000 by Dr. Sheldon Johnson, a retired optometrist and resident of St. George. He was in the process of excavating his property when he stumbled upon a large, naturally cut rock. The rock exposed a natural dinosaur footprint, which Johnson originally thought to be a complete dinosaur fossil due to the quality of the preservation. Realizing that these dinosaur tracks would be best served if they were maintained for scientific and educational purposes, Dr. Johnson and his wife, LaVerna, worked to set aside the land and its fossils. Eventually the Johnsons donated the tracks that had been found and arranged for the land to be cared for by the City of St. George. They worked with scientists, local businesses, and government officials on the local, state, and national level to create the museum which opened in 2005 that is here today. They set up the foundation that continues to preserve the site as a creative learning environment. The best preserved and most numerous tracks today form the in-place trackway and exhibits of the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site. Many other fossils including bones of dinosaurs and fish, shells of small aquatic animals, and leaves and seeds of plants, have joined the footprints, enabling paleontologists to reconstruct the nearly 200 million-year-old ecosystem preserved here with unprecedented clarity, an extreme rarity for rocks of any time period.

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Why Evangelicals think that Behemot is a Dinosaurs?

They just might be... Start with reading Genesis 1:24-31. Here is a basic form of logic called a syllogism: T. Rex is a land animal. Land animals were made on day 6. Therefore, T. Rex was made on day 6. So, according to the Bible, dinosaurs lived beside man. Dinosaurs were made on day six of the creation week the same as man; they were beasts of the earth. Then look at Genesis 6:18-20 about Noah and the animals. It does not say two of every kind except dinosaurs. Now, keep in mind that God brought the animals to Noah; it says they will "come to you"; he did not have to go out and catch them. If dinosaurs got on the ark, then dinosaurs got off the ark. That being the case, you would expect to find legends of dinosaurs in history. Why do not we read stories about men fighting dinosaurs or dinosaurs eating people's cows and stuff like that? Well, most people are unaware that the word "dinosaur" was not coined until the 1840s by Sir. Richard Owen (who was a Creationist by the way). So, if these creatures lived alongside humans prior to that time, they were not called dinosaurs. So what were they called? Dragons. Most cultures throughout the world possess ancient stories about dragons and sea monsters that closely resemble what we today would call dinosaurs. For instance, the flag of Wales depicts a dragon, which by the way, is claimed by some to be the oldest national flag still in use. Dragon stories have been handed down for generations in most civilizations. No doubt many of these stories have been exaggerated through the years, but that does not mean they did not have their original basis in fact. I believe many of the dragon legends are simply distorted versions of dinosaur encounters. And then read Job 40:15-24. Job was questioning God because of his suffering, and so God comes and challenges Job with His creation. Many people say, "Job 40 can not be speaking of a dinosaur." They say that, not because the description of Behemoth does not fit, but because of their preconceived conception that man and dinosaurs did not live together. The margin of the NIV says, "Possibly the hippopotamus or the elephant." Something to keep in mind-the footnotes are not a part of the original text. Well, the tail of an elephant or hippo is like a twig, not a cedar (most dogs have longer tails). Throughout the Scriptures, cedars were known for their great size and length. Nothing on earth today fits this description, but a sauropod type of dinosaur does. The largest we have found was over 120 feet long. That sounds to me like the "chief"-not a hippo. And then in Job 41, God describes the Leviathan (Isaiah 27:1 calls it the dragon in the sea.) The margin of the NIV says, "Possibly the crocodile." But the description again does not fit any animal alive today. Besides, man has never had a problem catching crocodiles, even primitive tribes, but God says in Job 41 that Leviathan could not be caught. Some think this was just a mythical creature since it speaks of it breathing fire. And yes, Job is a poetic book and those could just be poetic descriptions. But not necessarily. Impossible you say? What about the electric eel that can produce enough electricity to stun a horse? If the electric eel was extinct and all we could find were its fossils, would we be able to know that it could generate electricity? Nope. What about the firefly and anglerfish that can produce light? What about the bombardier beetle that can fire a boiling mixture of chemicals at its enemies that is 212 degrees Fahrenheit? Why could not God have created certain water-living reptiles that were capable of expelling hot gaseous fumes that could ignite? Most animals produce methane anyway, which is a flammable gas. Stories of fire-breathing dragons have circulated for thousands of years. Also, keep in mind that Behemoth and Leviathan were included along with real creatures that Job knew about. Read Job sometime. In Isaiah 30:6, Isaiah speaks of flying serpents [reptiles]. I also find it interesting that Herodotus, the Greek Historian who lived around 450 BC wrote about flying serpents in Arabia. He talked about finding their bones and described their snake-like bodies and bat-like wings. And the Jewish historian from the first century, Josephus, wrote about Moses and the Israelites having a difficult time passing through a particular region because of the presence of flying serpents. I think they were speaking of one of the pterosaurs like the pterodactyl, pteranodon, or rhamphorhynchus. So where did they go? Countries all over the world have stories of dragon slayers. Perhaps man killed them for food, sport, or because they were a nuisance. I think we just did not start our endangered species programs early enough. Another thing, is that there have been (even recently) reports of strange animals in the Amazon and the Congo that sound a lot like dinosaurs. And there are reports of giant flying reptiles in Indonesia, and so forth. There are thousands of square miles of almost impenetrable swamps and thick jungle in the world. Natives in some of these places describe beasts that fit with what just might be dinosaurs. And what about all the sightings of lake monsters? This is a field called cryptozoology-the search for hidden animals. There just might be a few dinosaurs left, teetering on the edge of extinction. We are constantly discovering new species of animals and plants in remote areas. A tree can not run away and hide and yet the Wollemi Pine Tree avoided detection until just recently (said to have become extinct millions of years ago).