Re: Yes, there was a world wide Noah's Flood

On Apr 13, 12:42 am, Cory Albrecht <coryalbre...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[M]adman wrote, On 12/04/09 01:32 PM:

:

1) A tropical antediluvian climate caused by a vapour canopy above the
atmosphere.

A vapour canopy is impossible. Atmospheric pressure is the weight of the
column of atmosphere above you pressing down upon you, so now you have
to add the equivalent of 8 kilometres of water

You are assuming that Gravity was the same back then as it is today:
How do you know this?

* http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/sauropods/biganims.html

Megafauna and the attenuated gravity of the antique system.
Copyright Ted Holden It is a fairly easy demonstration that nothing
any larger than the largest elephants could live in our world today,
and that the largest dinosaurs survived ONLY because the nature of the
world and of the solar system was then such that they did not
experience gravity as we do at all; they'd be crushed by their own
weight, collapse in a heap, and suffocate within minutes were they to.

A look at sauropod dinosaurs as we know them today requires that we
relegate the brontosaur, once thought to be one of the largest
sauropods, to welterweight or at most middleweight status. Fossil
finds dating from the 1970's dwarf him. The Avon field Guide to
Dinosaurs shows a brachiosaur (larger than a brontosaur), a supersaur,
and an ultrasaur juxtaposed, and the ultrasaur dwarfs the others.
Christopher McGowan's "DINOSAURS, SPITFIRES, & SEA DRAGONS", Harvard,
1991 cites a 180 ton weight estimate for the ultrasaur (page 118), and
(page 104) describes the volume-based methods of estimating dinosaur
weights. McGowan is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Royal
Ontario Museum.

This same look requires that dinosaur lifting requirements be compared
to human lifting capabilities. One objection which might be raised to
this would be that animal muscle tissue was somehow "better" than that
of humans. This, however, is known not to be the case; for instance,
from Knut Nielson's, "Scaling, Why is Animal size So Important",
Cambridge Univ Press, 1984, page 163, we have:

"It appears that the maximum force or stress that can be exerted
by any muscle is inherent in the structure of the muscle filaments.
The maximum force is roughly 4 to 4 kgf/cm2 cross section of muscle
(300 - 400 kN/m2). This force is body-size independent and is the same
for mouse and elephant muscle. The reason for this uniformity is that
the dimensions of the thick and thin muscle filaments, and also the
number of cross-bridges between them are the same. In fact the
structure of mouse muscle and elephant muscle is so similar that a
microscopist would have difficulty identifying them except for a
larger number of mitrochondria in the smaller animal. This uniformity
in maximum force holds not only for higher vertebrates, but for many
other organisms, including at least some, but not all invertebrates."

Another objection might be that sauropods were aquatic creatures.
Nobody believes that anymore; they had no adaptation for aquatic life,
their teeth show wear and tear which does not come from eating soft
aquatic vegetation, and trackways show them walking on land with no
difficulty.

A final objection would be that dinosaurs were somehow more
"efficient" than top human athletes, or had better "leverage".
Superposed images of sauropods and powerlifters at roughly equal-
weight sizes show the sauropod's legs to be puny compared to the human
athletes', as one would expect, since the sauropod's body was mostly
digestive system, the humans's mostly muscle. The better-leverage
argument would require the sauropod to be a spectacularly knob-kneed
sort of a creature whose knees and other joints were wider than those
of the human athletes, even though the rest of their legs were spindly
by contrast with the humans. A quick look at the pictures dispels
this.

By "scaled lift", I mean of course a lift record divided by the two-
thirds power of the athlete's body weight. As creatures get larger,
weight, which is proportional to volume, goes up in proportion to the
cube of the increase in dimension. Strength, on the other hand, is
known to be roughly proportional to cross section of muscle for any
particular limb, and goes up in proportion to the square of the
increase in dimension. This is the familiar "square-cube" problem. The
normal inverse operator for this is to simply divide by 2/3 power of
body weight, and this is indeed the normal scaling factor for all
weight lifting events, i.e. it lets us tell if a 200 lb. athlete has
actually done a "better" lift than the champion of the 180 lb. group.
For athletes roughly between 160 and 220 lbs, i.e. whose bodies are
fairly similar, these scaled lift numbers line up very nicely. It is
then fairly easily seen that a lift for a scaled up version of one
particular athlete can be computed via this formula, since the
similarity will be perfect, scaling being the only difference.

Consider the case of Bill Kazmaier, the king of the power lifters in
the seventies and eighties. Power lifters are, in the author's
estimation, the strongest of all athletes; they concentrate on the
three most difficult total-body lifts, i.e. benchpress, squat, and
dead-lift. They work out many hours a day and, it is fairly common
knowledge, use food to flavor their anabolic steroids with. No animal
the same weight as one of these men could be presumed to be as strong.
Kazmaier was able to do squats and dead lifts with weights between
1000 and 1100 lb. on a bar, assuming he was fully warmed up.

Standing Up at 70,000 lb.
Any animal has to be able to lift its own weight off the ground, i.e.
stand up, with no more difficulty than Kazmaier experiences doing a
1000 lb. squat. Consider, however, what would happen to Mr. Kazmaier,
were he to be scaled up to 70,000 lb., the weight commonly given for
the brontosaur. Kazmaier's maximum effort at standing, fully warmed
up, assuming the 1000 lb. squat, was 1340 lb. (1000 for the bar and
340 for himself). The scaled maximum lift would be a solution to:

1340/340^.667 = x/70,000^667 or 47,558 lb..

He'd not be able to lift his weight off the ground!

A sauropod dinosaur had four legs you might say; what happens if Mr.
Kazmaier uses arms AND legs at 70,000 lb.. The truth is that the squat
uses almost every muscle in the athlete's body very nearly to the
limits, but in this case, it doesn't even matter. A near maximum
benchpress effort for Mr. Kazmaier would fall around 600 lb.. This
merely changes the 1340 to 1940 in the equation above, and the answer
comes out as 68,853. Even using all muscles, some more than once, the
strongest man who we know anything about would not be able to lift his
own weight off the ground at 70,000 lb.!

Moreover, Kazmaier is using glutteal and lower back muscles in the
squat, and pectorals in the benchpress, i.e. extra muscle groups which
the sauropod he is being compared to would not be assisted by in
standing. Any tiny advantage in leverage which a sauropod might have
over the human lifter for any reason, would be overwhelmed by the huge
edge in available musculature and the usage of the extra muscle groups
on the part of the human in the comparison.

To believe then, that a brontosaur could stand at 70,000 lb., one has
to believe that a creature whose weight was largely gut and the vast
digestive mechanism involved in processing huge amounts of low-value
foodstuffs, was somehow stronger than a creature its size which was
almost entirely muscle, and that far better trained and conditioned
than would ever be found amongst grazing animals. That is not only
ludicrous in the case of the brontosaur, but the calculations only get
worse when you begin trying to scale upwards to the supersaur and
ultrasaur at their sizes.

How heavy can an animal still get to be in our world, then? How heavy
would Mr. Kazmaier be at the point at which the square-cube problem
made it as difficult for him just to stand up as it is for him to do
1000 lb. squats at his present size of 340 lb.? The answer is simply
the solution to:

1340/340^.667 = x/x^.667

or just under 21,000 lb.. In reality, elephants do not appear to get
quite to that point. McGowan (DINOSAURS, SPITFIRES, & SEA DRAGONS, p.
97) claims that a Toronto Zoo specimen was the largest in North
America at 14,300 lb., and Smithsonian personnel once informed the
author that the gigantic bush elephant specimen which appears at their
Museum of Natural History weighed around 8 tons.

Again, in all cases, we are comparing the absolute max effort for a
human weight lifter to lift and hold something for two seconds versus
the sauropod's requirement to move around and walk all day long with
scaled weight greater than these weights involved in the maximum, one-
shot, two-second effort. That just can't happen.
Sauropod Dinosaurs' Necks
A second category of evidence for attenuated felt effect of gravity in
antediluvian times arises from the study of sauropod dinosaurs' necks.
Scientists who study sauropod dinosaurs are now claiming that they
held their heads low, because they could not have gotten blood to
their brains had they held them high. McGowan (again, DINOSAURS,
SPITFIRES, & SEA DRAGONS) goes into this in detail (pages 101 - 120).
He mentions the fact that a giraffe's blood pressure, at 200 - 300 mm
Hg, far higher than that of any other animal, would probably rupture
the vascular system of any other animal, and is maintained by thick
arterial walls and by a very tight skin which apparently acts like a
jet pilot's pressure suit. A giraffe's head might reach to 20'. How a
sauropod might have gotten blood to its brain at 50' or 60' is the
real question.

Two articles which mention this problem appeared in the 12/91 issue of
Natural History. In "Sauropods and Gravity", Harvey B. Lillywhite of
Univ. Fla., Gainesville, notes:

"...in a Barosaurus with its head held high, the heart had to work
against a gravitational pressure of about 590 mm of mercury (Hg). In
order for the heart to eject blood into the arteries of the neck, its
pressure must exceed that of the blood pushing against the opposite
side of the outflow valve. Moreover, some additional pressure would
have been needed to overcome the resistance of smaller vessels within
the head for blood flow to meet the requirements for brain and facial
tissues. Therefore, hearts of Barosaurus must have generated pressures
at least six times greater than those of humans and three to four
times greater than those of giraffes."

In the same issue of Natural History, Peter Dodson ("Lifestyles of the
Huge and Famous"), mentions that:

"Brachiosaurus was built like a giraffe and may have fed like one.
But most sauropods were built quite differently. At the base of the
neck, a sauropod's vertebral spines unlike those of a giraffe, were
weak and low and did not provide leverage for the muscles required to
elevate the head in a high position. Furthermore, the blood pressure
required to pump blood up to the brain, thirty or more feet in the
air, would have placed extraordinary demands on the heart (see
opposite page) [Lillywhite's article] and would seemingly have placed
the animal at severe risk of a stroke, an aneurysm, or some other
circulatory disaster. If sauropods fed with the neck extended just a
little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet,
the blood pressure required would have been far more reasonable."

Dodson is neglecting what appears to be a dilemma in the case of the
brachiosaur, but there are at least two far greater dilemmas here. One
is that the good leaves were, in all likelihood, above the 20' mark;
holding his head out at 20', an ultrasaur would, in all likelihood,
starve.

Moreover, it turns out that a problem every bit as bad or worse than
the blood pressure problem would arise, perceived gravity being what
it is now, were sauropods to hold their heads out just above
horizontally as Dodson and others are suggesting. Try holding your arm
out horizontally for more than a minute or two, and then imagine your
arm being 40' long and 30,000 lb......

An ultrasaur or seismosaur with a neck 40' - 60' long and weighing
25000 - 40000 lb., would be looking at 400,000 to nearly a million
foot pounds of torque were one of them to try to hold his neck out
horizontally. That's crazy. You don't hang a 30,000 lb load 40' off
into space even if it is made out of wood and structural materials,
much less flesh and blood. No building inspector in America could be
bribed sufficiently to let you build such a thing.

In fact, a cursory look at an elephant's skeleton reveals a structural
system much like Roman archicture with one and only one purpose in
mind, i.e. bearing the elephant's great weight. The legs are columns
and the spine is a Roman arch. A sauropod's neck, however,
particularly in the case of the recent ultrasaur and seismosaur finds,
weighed several times the weight of a large elephant and, if held
outwards horizontally, would actually arch downwards (the wrong way).
Reconstructions actually depict them like that, no thought whatever
having been taken as to the consequences, either by the scientists or
the artists involved.

And so, sauropods (in our gravity) couldn't hold their heads up, and
they couldn't hold them out either. That doesn't leave much.
Antediluvian Flying Creatures
A third category of evidence for attenuated felt effect of gravity in
antediluvian times arises from studies of creatures which flew in
those times, and of creatures which fly now.

In the antediluvian world, 350 lb flying creatures soared in skies
which no longer permit flying creatures above 30 lb. or so. Modern
birds of prey (the Argentinean teratorn) weighing 170 -200 lb. with
wingspans of 30' also flew; within recorded history, central Asians
have been trying to breed hunting eagles for size and strength, and
have not gotten them beyond 25 lb. or thereabouts. At that point they
are able to take off only with the greatest difficulty. Something was
vastly different in the pre-flood world.

Nothing much larger than 30 lb. or so flies anymore, and those
creatures, albatrosses and a few of the largest condors and eagles,
are marginal. Albatrosses in particular are called "gooney birds" by
sailors because of the extreme difficulty they experience taking off
and landing, their landings being (badly) controlled crashes, and all
of this despite long wings made for maximum lift.

The felt effect of the force of gravity on earth was much less in
remote times, and only this allowed such giant creatures to fly. No
flying creature has since RE-EVOLVED into anything like former sizes,
and the one or two birds which have retained such sizes have forfeited
any thought of flight, their wings becoming vestigial.

A book of interest here is Adrian Desmond's "The Hot Blooded
Dinosaurs. Desmond has a good deal to say about the pteranodon, the 40
- 50 lb. pterosaur which scientists used to believe to be the largest
creature which ever flew:

"Pteranodon had lost its teeth, tail and some flight musculature,
and its rear legs had become spindly. It was, however, in the actual
bones that the greatest reduction of weight was achieved. The wing
bones, backbone and hind limbs were tubular, like the supporting
struts of an aircraft, which allows for strength yet cuts down on
weight. In Pteranodon these bones, although up to an inch in diameter,
were no more than cylindrical air spaces bounded by an outer bony
casing no thicker than a piece of card. Barnum Brown of the American
Museum reported an armbone fragment of an unknown species of pterosaur
from the Upper Cretaceous of Texas in which 'the culmination of the
pterosaur... the acme of light construction' was achieved. Here, the
trend had continued so far that the bone wall of the cylinder was an
unbelievable one-fiftieth of an inch thick Inside the tubes bony
crosswise struts no thicker than pins helped to strengthen the
structure, another innovation in aircraft design anticipated by the
Mesozoic pterosaurs.

The combination of great size and negligible weight must
necessarily have resulted in some fragility. It is easy to imagine
that the paper-thin tubular bones supporting the gigantic wings would
have made landing dangerous. How could the creature have alighted
without shattering all of its bones How could it have taken off in the
first place It was obviously unable to flap twelve-foot wings strung
between straw-thin tubes. Many larger birds have to achieve a certain
speed by running and flapping before they can take off and others have
to produce a wing beat speed approaching hovering in order to rise. To
achieve hovering with a twenty-three foot wingspread, Pteranodon would
have required 220 lb. of flight muscles as efficient as those in
humming birds. But it had reduced its musculature to about 8 lb., so
it is inconceivable that Pteranodon could have taken off actively.

Pteranodon, then, was not a flapping creature, it had neither the
muscles nor the resistance to the resulting stress. Its long, thin
albatross-like wings betray it as a glider, the most advanced glider
the animal kingdom has produced. With a weight of only 40 lb. the wing
loading was only I lb. per square foot. This gave it a slower sinking
speed than even a man-made glider, where the wings have to sustain a
weight of at least 4 lb. per square foot. The ratio of wing area to
total weight in Pteranodon is only surpassed in some of the insects.
Pteranodon was constructed as a glider, with the breastbone, shoulder
girdle and backbone welded into a box-like rigid fuselage, able to
absorb the strain from the giant wings. The low weight combined with
an enormous wing span meant that Pteranodon could glide at ultra-low
speeds without fear of stalling. Cherrie Bramwell of Reading
University has calculated that it could remain aloft at only 15 m.p.h.
So takeoff would have been relatively easy. All Pteranodon needed was
a breeze of 15 m.p.h. when it would face the wind, stretch its wings
and be lifted into the air like a piece of paper. No effort at all
would have been required. Again, if it was forced to land on the sea,
it had only to extend its wings to catch the wind in order to raise
itself gently out of the water. It seems strange that an animal that
had gone to such great lengths to reduce its weight to a minimum
should have evolved an elongated bony crest on its skull."

Desmond has mentioned some of the problems which even the pteranodon
faced at fifty lb. or so; no possibility of flapping the wings for
instance. The giant teratorn finds of Argentina were not known when
the book was written... they came out in the eighties in issues of
Science Magazine and other places. The terotorn was a 160 - 200 lb
eagle with a 27' wingspan, a modern bird whose existence involved
flapping wings, aerial maneuver etc. How so? There are a couple of
other problems which Desmond does not mention, including the fact that
life for a pure glider would be almost impossible in the real world,
and that some limited flying ability would be necessary for any aerial
creature. Living totally at the mercy of the winds, a creature might
never get back home to its nest and children given the first contrary
wind.

There is one other problem. Desmond notes a fairly reasonably modus
operandi for the pteranodon, i.e. that it had a throat pouch like a
pelican, has been found with fish fossils indicating a pelican-like
existence, soaring over the waves and snapping up fish without
landing. That should indicate that, peculiarly amongst all of the
creatures of the earth, the pteranodon should have been practically
IMMUNE from the great extinctions of past ages. Velikovsky noted that
large animals had the greatest difficulty getting to high ground and
other safe havens at the times of floods and the global catastrophes
of past ages and were therefore peculiarly susceptible to extinction.
Ovid notes (Metamorphoses) that men and animals hid on mountain tops
during the deluge, but that most died from lack of food during the
hard year following. But high places safe from flooding were always
there; oceans were always there and fish were always there. The
pteranodon's way of life should have been impervious to all mishap;
the notion that pteranodon died out when the felt effect of gravity on
earth changed after the flood is the only good explanation.

Back to Adrian Desmond for more on size as related to pterosaurs now:

"It would be a grave understatement to say that, as a flying
creature, Pteranodon was large. Indeed, there were sound reasons for
believing that it was the largest animal that ever could become
airborne. With each increase in size, and therefore also weight, a
flying animal needs a concomitant increase in power (to beat the wings
in a flapper and to hold and maneuver them in a glider), but power is
supplied by muscles which themselves add still more weight to the
structure.-- The larger a flyer becomes the disproportionately
weightier it grows by the addition of its own power supply. There
comes a point when the weight is just too great to permit the machine
to remain airborne. Calculations bearing on size and power suggested
that the maximum weight that a flying vertebrate can attain is about
50 lb.: Pteranodon and its slightly larger but lesser known Jordanian
ally Titanopteryx were therefore thought to be the largest flying
animals."

Notice that the calculations mentioned say about 50 lb. is max for
either a flier or a glider, and that experience from our present world
absolutely coincides with this and, in fact, don't go quite that high;
the biggest flying creatures which we actually see are albatrosses,
geese etc. at around 30 - 35 lb.. Similarly, my calculations say that
about 20000 lb. would be the largest theoretically possible land
animal in our present world, and Jumbo the stuffed elephant which I've
mentioned, the largest known land animal from our present world, was
around 16000.

"But in 1972 the first of a spectacular series of finds suggested
that we must drastically rethink our ideas on the maximum size
permissible in flying - vertebrates. Although excavations are still in
progress, three seasons' digging - from 1972 to 1974 - by Douglas A.
Lawson of the University of California has revealed partial skeletons
of three ultra-large pterosaurs in the Big Bend National Park in
Brewster County, Texas These skeletons indicate creatures that must
have dwarfed even Pteranodon. Lawson found the remains off four wings,
a long neck, hind legs and toothless jaws in deposits that were non-
marine; the ancient entombing sediments are thought to have been made
instead by floodplain silting. The immense size of the Big Bend
pterosaurs, which have already become known affectionately in the
palaeontological world as '747s' or 'Jumbos', may be gauged by setting
one of the Texas upper arm bones alongside that of a Pteranodon: the
'Jumbo' humerus is fully twice the length of Pteranodon's. Lawson's
computer estimated wingspan for this living glider is over fifty feet
It is no surprise, says Lawson announcing the animal in Science in
1975, that the definitive remains of this creature were found in
Texas.

Unlike Pteranodon, these creatures were found in rocks that were
formed 250 miles inland of the Cretaceous coastline. The lack of even
lake deposits in the vicinity militates against these particular
pterosaurs having been fishers. Lawson suggests that they were carrion
feeders, gorging themselves on the rotting mounds of flesh left after
the dismembering of a dinosaur carcass. Perhaps, like vultures and
condors, these pterosaurs hung in the air over the corpse waiting
their turn. Having alighted on the carcass, their toothless beaks
would have restricted them to feeding upon the soft, pulpy internal
organs. How they could have taken to the air after gorging themselves
is something of a puzzle. Wings of such an extraordinary size could
not have been flapped when the animal was grounded. Since the
pterosaurs were unable to run in order to launch themselves they must
have taken off vertically. Pigeons are only able to takeoff vertically
by reclining their bodies and clapping the wings in front of them; as
flappers, the Texas pterosaurs would have needed very tall stilt-like
legs to raise the body enough to allow the 24-foot wings to clear the
ground The main objection, however, still rests in the lack of
adequate musculature for such an operation. Is the only solution to
suppose that, with wings fully extended and elevators raised, they
were lifted passively off the ground by the wind? If Lawson is correct
and the Texas pterosaurs were carrion feeders another problem is
envisaged. Dinosaur carcasses imply the presence of dinosaurs. The
ungainly Brobdignagian pterosaurs were vulnerable to attack when
grounded, so how did they escape the formidable dinosaurs? Left at the
mercy of wind currents, takeoff would have been a chancy business.
Lawson's exotic pterosaurs raise some intriguing questions. Only
continued research will provide the answers."

Note that Desmond mentions a number of ancillary problems, any of
which would throw doubt on the pterosaur's ability to exist as
mentioned, and neglects the biggest question of all: the calculations
which say 50 lb. are max have not been shown to be in error; we have
simply discovered larger creatures. Much larger. This is what is
called a dilemma.

Then I come to what Robert T. Bakker has to say about the Texas
Pterosaurs ("The Dinosaur heresies", Zebra Books, pp 290-291:

"Immediately after their paper came out in Science, Wann Langston
and his students were attacked by aeronautical engineers who simply
could not believe that the big Bend dragon had a wingspan of forty
feet or more. Such dimensions broke all the rules of flight
engineering; a creature that large would have broken its arm bones if
it tried to fly... Under this hail of disbelief, Langston and his crew
backed off somewhat. Since the complete wing bones hadn't been
discovered, it was possible to reconstruct the Big Bend Pterodactyl
[pterosaur] with wings much shorter than fifty feet."

The original reconstruction had put wingspan for the pterosaur at over
60'. Bakker goes on to say that he believes the pterosaurs really were
that big and that they simply flew despite our not comprehending how,
i.e. that the problem is ours. He does not give a solution as to what
we're looking at the wrong way.

So much for the idea of anything RE-EVOLVING into the sizes of the
flying creatures of the antedeluvian world. What about the possibility
of man BREEDING something like a teratorn? Could man actively breed
even a 50 lb. eagle?

David Bruce's "Bird of Jove", Ballentine Books, 1971, describes the
adventures of Sam Barnes, one of England's top falconers at the time,
who actually brought a Berkut eagle out of Kirghiz country to his home
in Pwllheli, Wales. Berkuts are the biggest eagles, and Atlanta, the
particular eagle which Barnes brought back, at 26 lb. in flying trim,
is believed to be as large as they ever get. These, as Khan Chalsan
explained to Barnes, have been bred specifically for size and ferocity
for many centuries. They are the most prized of all possessions
amongst nomads, and are the imperial hunting bird of the turko-mongol
peoples.

The eagle Barnes brought back had a disease for which no cure was
available in Kirghiz, and was near to death then, otherwise there
would have been no question of his having her. Chalsan explained that
a Berkut of Atlanta's size would normally be worth more than a dozen
of the most beautiful women in his country.

The killing powers of a big eagle are out of proportion to its size.
Berkuts are normally flown at wolves, deer, and other large prey.
Barnes witnessed Atlanta killing a deer in Kirghiz, and Chalsan told
him of her killing a black wolf a season earlier. Mongols and other
nomads raise sheep and goats, and obviously have no love for wolves. A
wolf might be little more than a day at the office for Atlanta with
her 11" talons, however, a wolf is a major-league deal for an average
sized Berkut at 15 - 20 lb.. Chalsan explained that wolves
occasionally win these battles, and that he had once seen a wolf kill
three of the birds before the fourth killed him. Quite obviously,
there would be an advantage to having the birds be bigger, i.e. to
having the average berkut be 25 lb., and a big one be 40 or 50.

It has never been done, however, despite all of the efforts since the
days of Chengis Khan. We have Chengis Khan's famous "What is best in
life..." quote, and the typical Mongol reply from one of his captains
involved falconry. They regarded it as important. Chengis Khan, Oktai,
Kuyuk, Hulagu, Batui, Monke, Kubilai et. al. were all into this sport
big time, they all wanted these birds big, since they flew them at
everything from wolves and deer (a big berkut like Atlanta can drive
its talons in around a wolf's spine and snap it) to leopards and
tigers, and there was no lack of funds for the breeding program
involved. Chengis Khan did not suffer from poverty.

Moreover, the breeding of berkuts has continued apace from that day to
this, including a 200 year stretch during which those people ruled
almost all of the world which you'd care to own at the time, and they
never got them any bigger than 25 lb. or so.

Remember Desmond's words regarding the difficulty which increasingly
larger birds will experience getting airborne from flat ground?
Atlanta was powerful enough in flight, but she was not easily able to
take off from flat ground. Barnes noted one instance in which a town
crank attacked Atlanta with a cane and the great bird had to
frantically run until it found a sand dune from which to launch
herself. This could mean disaster in the wild. A bird of prey will
often come to ground with prey, and if she can't take off from flat
ground to avoid trouble once in awhile... it would only take once.
Khan Chalsan had explained the necessity of having the birds in
captivity for certain periods, and nesting wild at other times. A bird
bigger than Atlanta would not survive the other times.

One variety of teratorn, however, judging from pictures which have
appeared in the December 1980 issue of "Bioscience" magazine, was very
nearly a scaled-up golden eagle weighing 170 lb. or so, with a
wingspan of 25' as compared to Atlanta's 10. In our world, that can't
happen.
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    ... The "dinosaur birds" were small, most of them no bigger than a modern ... If you're referring to pterosaurs, ... extremely light and extremely strong for their weight. ... A look at sauropod dinosaurs as we know them today requires that we ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Inertial and Gravitational Mass - Equivalent?
    ... Here's a rather simple demonstration that gravitation and inertia are equivalent: the astronauts in the orbiting space station do not feel the earth's gravity, and float freely within its walls. ... In your "coins in a car" example, there is no sideways force on the coins, but they move to the outside of the car's turn because of the force on YOU -- you are in a non-inertial frame, you can feel the car's door push on you, but that force is not on the coins, so you see them slide to the right. ... Before it hits the floor he checks his weight again. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Torah Bells
    ... and when you carry you're applying a force for a certain distance. ... move your leg forward. ... Gravity then starts to do the rest causing you ... because of the added weight of the object. ...
    (soc.culture.jewish.moderated)