From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Holden numbers for humans, elephants, saurs
Date: 7 Nov 92 05:24:26 GMT
Organization: HTE

In article <720758483@sheol.UUCP>, throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop) writes:

^: From: news@fedfil.UUCP (news) (Ted Holden)
^: Suppose we take the weight and size figures which McGowan gives for
^: Tantor, roughly 11' tall and 14000 lbs, and cube the 13/11 ratio to get
^: a scaled weight figure for an elephant 13' tall at the shoulder;  we get
^: around 24000 lbs, which also means that the number I had heard for the
^: elephant at the Smithsonian could be off a bit.  It turns out it doesn't
^: matter.

^Ah, finally Ted catches up to what I've been saying for months.
^For example, I posted almost exactly the same position a month ago
^(on October 4):

^+ Subject: Holden, Jumbo, and the Fenykoevi elephant
^+ Message-ID: <718245000@sheol.UUCP>
^[...]
^+ [..scaling by height to check..] gives us 24000 lbs, 
^+ and a Holden Number of 28.8.
^+ ( Note: this doesn't really dammage Ted's position at all, as he
^+   has said several times that "around 27" was all the accuracy he
^+   claimed for his Limit.  )
^[...]
^
^However, it *does* mean that elephants have considerably less margin for
^error than Ted has claimed before, and altered leverage must play some
^role, even under Ted's theory, for elephants to be able to stand at all. 
^It is implausible that the largest elephants should be so close to the
^limit, and yet show no difficulty because of it. 

It only means that the very small percentage of the very largest elephants
would have little room for error, if any.  Tantor, remember, was the largest
in North America at 14000 lbs or so.

Elephants apparently never really stop growing, by all accounts.  I do not
rule out the possibility that, for the last ten or fifteen years of their
lives, a few of these extreme cases may simply never have gotten off their
feet.  That would make for a hell of a life, but it would solve
the problem.

I cannot imagine an entire species surviving if no adult could ever get off
its feet.

^
^: Common sense says you're not going to double that ratio, however, and
^: that's exactly what would have to happen for a 200000 lb sauropod just
^: to stand...  he'd need a ratio of around 58.
^
^Well, Ted hasn't caught up here yet.  Maybe common sense says that twice
^the force isn't plausible, but simple calculations show that it *is*
^plausible.  First, correct for biped/quadruped, (which gives an HN > 40)
^then correct for the 1.5 leverage factor indicated by measurements, and
^the force available to the sauropod would be sufficient (that is, HN > 60). 
^
You need around 70 or so for the ultrasaur just to stand, 80 or more
for anything remotely like the seizemosaur or larger creatures.
^
^At this point in the past, Ted has said something about "every muscle
^is already used to maximum in the squat", but that's just silly, and
^obviously not true.  The arms and legs are used in series in the
^squat.  Using them in parallel is quite feasible.

Legs and lower back muscles on Kaz are, in all likelihood, around 50%
of body weight.  Nothing remotely like that holds true for the saur.  Most
of his weight was digestive system, to handle the low-value foods he ate,
and there was further waastage of weight in the tail and neck.  If Kaz
couldn't make it at 200000 lbs, then the saur wouldn't begin to, and Kaz
fails by more than 2/1 at 200000, i.e. he would only be able to squat 
around 95000 lbs, less than half his weight.

No difference in leverage would begin to compensate for the differential 
in musculature, and in the percentage of weight devoted to muscle mass
used for lifting.
^
^: Reliable sources, including McGowan, give weight figures for the 100'
^: ultrasaur of around 180 tons.  At least two creatures far larger than
^: that are now known, the 140' seismosaur, and (from tracks), a Moraccan
^: creatures named breviparipus which is estimated at 160'.  Such a creatures
^: could have weighed upwards of a half million lbs.
^
^That's "Breviparopus" and "Morocco", in case anybody wanted to try
^to look something up about it.
^
^I've already shown why McGowan was mistaken.  And note well, I'm not
^presuming to know more about the subject than McGowan, I'm merely
^pointing to more recent results that McGowan wasn't aware of at the
^time. 
^
^It turns out there IS no 100' ultrasaur.  McGowan's weight figure for
^the ultrasaur was predicated on a length of 100 ft.  But he made this
^prediction before the handful of bones that indicate the sauropod were
^fully examined.  It turns out that the ultrasaur was only 82 ft long.
^The 82 ft length gives a mass under 200000 lbs.  Note well that McGowan
^did NOT evaluate the actual bones for his estimate of 180 tons, he was
^relying on the evaluations of other people for the length, who turned
^out to be wrong. 

I have shown numerous instances in which apparent facts involving antique
animals and their sizes have been bent to come closer to conforming with
what is known about size and functionality, assuming always uniformity and no possibility of perceived gravity ever changing.  

For instance, Baker mentions the fact that the Big Bend pterosaurs' bones
indicated a wingspan of 60' or more, but that the enginering depts at UT
would not allow Lawson to reconstruct them that way.

The 100', 360000 lb figures for the ultrasaur have stood from the seventies
to now, political correctness or no.  The idea that anybody could have 
mismeasured something like that by 18' is ludicrous.  A more recent 
interpretation of partial skeletal fragments would be just that:  an
interpretation.  There are numerous interpretations of sauropod sizes, 
including the ones in Guiness, which have the largest sauropods at
around 50 tons or so.  That isn't the standard view.

Full skeletons exist for the seismosaur...  140', no guesswork.

Estimates for the breviparopus run to 160', and the creature is assumed to
have been a brachiosaurid from the tracks.  That means 500000+ lbs by
any reasonable standard.

[much blather based entirely on Guiness omitted]^
^An afterthought, since Ted is again putting forward the idea that the
^GBR is an unreliable source. 
^I'll agree as how I wouldn't trust the GBR too far on matters too
^technical...  

Then why the preceeding blather?

Why not just do what Joe Frazier and Hirohito did and admit when you've
been whupped?




-- 
Ted Holden
HTE

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