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Old 03-November-2008, 12:41 PM
grant hutchison grant hutchison is offline
Order of Kilopi
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PraedSt View Post
Thanks Grant, I'll go look. He uses metric units I take it?
He does. Be warned that it's now (ulp) 19 years old, so you're not going to see a treatment of the recently discovered giants. But basic physics hasn't changed, and the size of an Apatosaurus hasn't changed, and scaling laws haven't changed, so there's much of biophysical interest in there. Alexander, for instance, looks at the difference in load-bearing behaviour of sand and clay, and shows that a domestic cow will sink a lot farther into sand than an Apatosaurus, but an Apatosaurus will sink further than a cow in clay. Who'd have guessed?
In essence, it's the same message we had on the pterosaurs thread: biophysics constrains the options of giant animals; it doesn't render them impossible.

You can pick up a cheap second-hand copy pretty easily.

Grant Hutchison
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