Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth
| Article | |
|---|---|
| Title | Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth |
| Author(s) | David de Hilster |
| Published in | Beyond Mainstream |
| Date | 2018-08-31 |
| Subject area | Physics |
| Topics | expansion tectonics, palaeogravity, dinosaurs |
Read online | Read the full article |
Archived copy | Archived version |
| Retrieved | 2026-07-23 |
"Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth" is an article by David de Hilster published on 31 August 2018 on Beyond Mainstream.
De Hilster starts from a question most children ask and few pursue: why was everything so large in the age of the dinosaurs — the animals, the plants, even the insects. He credits Stephen W Hurrell with the answer, arrived at from mechanical engineering: doubling a structure's linear size multiplies its weight eightfold, so gravity sets the ceiling on land animal size. For creatures that large to have lived, the Earth's surface gravity must have been weaker.