DinosaurTheory Introduction and Summary

Millions of years ago, dinosaurs grew to be over three times larger than the terrestrial animals of today. Nearly all young children are fascinated by the enormous size of dinosaurs, and yet when they go to school, they are informed that - according to experts - there is nothing odd about dinosaurs being so large. According to paleontologists, dinosaurs had numerous adaptations that made them much lighter and stronger, and this is what allowed them to grow so large. The paleontologists’ claims are in science textbooks, repeated by science teachers, echoed in the media, and even provided by artificial intelligence if students ask. What children - and everyone else - are not being told is how Galileo’s Square-Cube Law - the simple physics concept that explains how size matters - clarifies what is wrong with the paleontologists’ dismissal of the paradox of how dinosaurs grew so large.

For literally centuries, from the moment scientists first recognized that dinosaurs previously roamed the Earth, paleontologists have struggled to explain how dinosaurs grew so incredibly large. That has not changed. What has changed is paleontologists’ dominance of the media and institutions, which ensures that only their explanations are presented.

Despite Galileo’s Square-Cube Law being one of the most fundamental concepts in science, the vast majority of people - including teachers, scientists, and engineers - have never even heard of it. Of the few science teachers who know about Galileo’s Square-Cube Law, those who attempt to teach it quickly abandon the effort once students start questioning how dinosaurs could be so large. The consequence of grade school teachers avoiding the awkward situation of having to tell their students that the paleontologists are wrong is that our education system fails to teach students the important fact that size matters.

Rather than doing the right thing, paleontologists continue to double down on their false claim that there is nothing odd about dinosaurs being three times larger than today’s terrestrial vertebrates. As a consequence, Galileo’s Square-Cube Law is effectively being censored from science education. It is difficult to overstate how much this undermines the credibility of science and how much it holds back its advancement. Recognizing how size matters is a concept fundamental to nearly every major scientific discipline, including biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, and numerous others. Nearly all students struggle to make sense of many topics in science because they were never taught the fundamental concepts clarifying how size matters.

Perhaps these revelations have caused a loss of innocence for people who are only now realizing that some leading scientists prioritize their own egos over the advancement of science. Truth be told, science has always attracted narcissists - self-centered individuals who never admit to being wrong and will gladly destroy the world just to gain attention. Paleontology just seems to attract more than its fair share of these horrible people. This is why we cannot simply trust the experts. The public needs to learn science, develop reasoning skills, ask questions, and hold these wayward scientists accountable.

The point of this discussion is not merely to criticize, but to clear the mind of bad beliefs so that a fresh start can be made in the search for a reasonable explanation for how the dinosaurs could have grown so large.

DinosaurTheory is a science website that presents evidence-based arguments explaining how the dinosaurs grew so large. The solution to the large dinosaurs’ paradox is also the solution to numerous other paradoxes associated with the Mesozoic era, such as the flying pterosaurs, large flying birds, and the unusual Mesozoic climate. Along the way in explaining this evidence, DinosaurTheory also explains numerous scientific concepts, such as Galileo’s Square-Cube Law, how airplanes and flying vertebrates fly, and how the moons and planets of our solar system evolved.

DinosaurTheory is not for those who avoided science and therefore lack an understanding of the laws of nature. Nor is it for those who believe leading scientists are infallible and accept their claims without questioning them. To be a real scientist, besides having a firm understanding of the laws of nature, one must also be able to reason well. Reasoning well comes from asking questions and practicing the consideration of competing evidence-based arguments to objectively determine which one is most likely true. Most people are not capable of doing this.

DinosaurTheory is for those who see through the irrational explanations used to dismiss paradoxes that have haunted paleontologists and other scientists for decades, if not centuries. It is for those who reject these highly questionable explanations from paleontologists for how dinosaurs could grow so large or how giant pterosaurs could fly. It is for those who understand that, for science to move forward, these and other paradoxes must be confronted and solved.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

Real Scientists Solve Problems

The Puzzle

Nearly every scientist encounters anomalies they cannot explain. What should we make of this? While science deniers use such events to reject science entirely, authoritarian scientists can be just as wrong in denying these paradoxes to preserve their image of being infallible. Neither extreme advances science. Instead, science progresses when science-minded people are curious about these puzzling paradoxes, ask questions, and, when possible, investigate the problems and find solutions.

The foundational belief of science is that we exist in a rational reality. The assumption that our reality must be rational gives us hope and confidence in our attempts to understand the events and workings of our world, and it is a perspective that has been remarkably successful. Having a firm belief that we exist in a rational reality can be incredibly helpful when it comes to solving problems regarding the workings of nature. This perspective – that our reality makes sense and so there must be a rational solution to a given paradox – is what gives curious scientists the fortitude to push on to find the answers.

The large dinosaurs’ paradox is actually just one of numerous scientific paradoxes involving the Mesozoic era. Besides exceptionally large dinosaurs, there were the giant flying reptiles known as pterosaurs. Today, not a single species of reptile is capable of flight, yet during the Mesozoic era, pterosaurs grew to become the largest creatures that ever flew. In addition to these massive flying reptiles, enormous birds filled the skies - birds at least a few times larger than the largest flying birds today. Moreover, unlike most modern large birds, which typically require exceptionally large wings to fly, these huge Mesozoic birds were able to fly with only relatively small wings. Beyond the oddity of these extremely large vertebrates, the Mesozoic climate was noticeably different: throughout the era, Earth had a nearly uniform, mild temperate climate across its entire surface, with no ice at either the South or North Pole.

Instead of seeing the big picture – that something was fundamentally different about the Earth during the Mesozoic era – for the past two centuries paleontologists have promoted dozens of ad hoc explanations in their attempts to explain away these anomalies. Then, like playing game of whack-a-mole, every time clearer-thinking scientists manage to convince the paleontologists that their hypothesis is unworkable the paleontologist will simply rally around a new ad hoc explanation – that is just as bad - to replace the one that was most recently rejected.

DinosaurTheory contends that the immense sizes of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and flying birds of the Mesozoic era are only paradoxes for the paleontologists who refuse to challenge their core assumption: that Earth’s ancient environment was essentially the same as today’s. If we challenge this incorrect assumption, then these paradoxes are resolved. Furthermore, instead of seeing these numerous anomalies as annoying problems that need to be explained away, we should look at these outliners as clues that lead us to understanding how the Mesozoic era Earth was different. When examined collectively, all of these individual sets of evidence point to one simple, elegant, and scientifically sound solution.

In addition to the explanations of a few key scientific concepts, what follows is a list of major scientific paradoxes of the Mesozoic era. Think of them as clues. Read them carefully. With confidence that reality is rational, enjoy applying logic to solve one of the greatest puzzles of our time. At the end of the list there is a link that will take you to the solution.

Can you solve the puzzle of the gigantic animals of the Mesozoic era?

Scientific Paradoxes and Questions

1. Does Size Matter?

In 1638, Galileo published Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, in which he explained why objects cannot exist at any arbitrary size. However, nearly four centuries later, most people - and even most scientists and engineers - are still unsure whether size matters or how it matters. Size most certainly does matter, and this is a scientific concept fundamental to nearly every discipline: physics, biology, chemistry, geology, astronomy, and so on. Yet it is almost always ignored in science education because it conflicts with the paleontology community’s efforts to dismiss the paradox of dinosaurs and pterosaurs being so large.

While science education boards recommend teaching students how size affects the properties of objects, they do not address the incongruity of the dinosaurs and pterosaurs being abnormally large. This places grade school science teachers in an awkward position, because once students grasp the implications of size, intelligent students begin questioning how dinosaurs could have grown so large. At that point, the teacher must either acknowledge that paleontologists are wrong or leave students with the impression that science does not make sense.

While grade school teachers may tell students that size is important, that statement by itself is not meaningful unless it includes an explanation of Galileo’s Square-Cube Law, so students understand why size is important. It is a major failure of science education that everyone is not clearly aware of how size matters.

2. Large Dinosaurs Paradox

Currently, African elephants and giraffes represent the upper limits of size and height that terrestrial animals can achieve in today’s environment, constrained by factors such as bone strength, muscle strength, blood pressure, and possibly gravitational respiratory stress. Yet during the Mesozoic era, 65 to 245 million years ago, the largest dinosaurs grew to over three times the height and at least fifteen to thirty times more massive than these modern animals. Species such as Argentinosaurus, Brachiosaurus, and Patagotitan mayorum reached lengths exceeding 30 meters, weights of at least 70 metric tons, and over 12 meters in height.

Paleontologists have floated one questionable hypothesis after another in their efforts to convince the public that there is nothing unusual about dinosaurs being so large. Initially, many of the bipedal dinosaurs were mounted in museums as though they walked on four legs. Nearly a century ago, paleontologists suggested that the largest dinosaurs, such as sauropods, had behavior similar to that of hippos, spending most of their time partially or fully submerged in water to rely on its buoyancy for support. Now, paleontologists argue that dinosaurs were significantly lighter due to having hollow bones.

The recent claim that hollow bones helped dinosaurs support their massive size - like so many other explanations - relies on people “trusting the experts” rather than thinking critically about whether the idea makes sense. Halving the skeleton’s weight reduces the dinosaur’s total mass by only 7.5 to 10%. Meanwhile, with less bone to bear the load, stress on the supporting limbs increases by a factor of 1.8 to 1.85 - enough to cause the bones to break. Far from solving the massive weight paradox, the hollow bones hypothesis only makes it worse.

3. Tall Dinosaurs' Blood Pressure Paradox

The immense height of some sauropod dinosaurs presents a major physiological paradox: how could these animals pump blood to their head? Using the equation P = ρ g h, where P is the pressure, ρ is the density of blood, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and h is the vertical height, the required systolic blood pressure increases linearly with neck height. For a sauropod with a head 9 meters above its heart, the pressure needed would vastly exceed anything seen in modern animals.

For comparison, giraffes, with a vertical neck height of about 2.5 to 3 meters, have specialized adaptations to sustain blood flow at high pressures. Yet their cardiovascular system already operates at the limit of biological feasibility. The much greater height of sauropods would demand pressures far beyond what thickened arterial walls and powerful hearts could likely achieve. Paleontologists do not have an acceptable hypothesis that resolves this height paradox.

4. Why Do Dinosaurs Have Their Unique Form?

While much attention is given to the large size of dinosaurs, there is a tendency to overlook their distinctive shape: most dinosaurs have strong tails and much larger rear legs compared to their forelimbs. But why is this the case? What is the reason behind the typical dinosaur form being so different from that of modern terrestrial vertebrates?

With such strong rear legs for propulsion and a powerful tail capable of movement similar to that of aquatic vertebrates - like a crocodile’s - this body shape might have been useful if the dinosaur were constantly moving across a river or shallow lake, provided the water remained at just the right depth.

However, this suggestion raises many questions. While the "shoulder-high water" hypothesis helps visualize the purpose of the strong tail in propelling the animal through a dense fluid, it would be both unlikely and actually impossible for the lake water to be at the ideal depth for both adult and juvenile dinosaurs of various sizes. Even stating that the water was at shoulder height doesn’t resolve the issue, since the skeletal frame of Edmontosaurus shows its tail positioned above its shoulders. For the tail to function effectively, the animal would need to be fully submerged in this dense fluid. But if the dinosaur was fully submerged, how did it breathe?

Dinosaurs were probably not breathing underwater, and based on the dissimilarity between their feet and those of modern aquatic or semi-aquatic animals, it seems unlikely that they spent much time in the water. But if dinosaurs were not submerged in water, then what was this dense fluid that gave purpose to their large, muscular tail and powerful rear legs?

5. Flying Pterosaurs Paradox

Pterosaurs were giant flying reptiles that coexisted with the dinosaurs. They were the largest flying animals that ever existed. This fact is especially remarkable because flight requires a high level of power output, yet pterosaurs were reptiles - animals known for their low-power, cold-blooded metabolism. Furthermore, the larger the animal, the more difficult it becomes to meet the power demands of flight. In contrast to these large pterosaurs that made flying look easy, there is not a single reptile species today - no matter how small - that is capable of powered flight.

To explain how giant pterosaurs could take to the air, paleontologists have proposed various hypotheses, all of which attribute one or more extraordinary abilities to these creatures. Some of the most common claims suggest that pterosaurs were significantly lighter than other animals of similar size, possessed extraordinarily strong bones and muscles, and could propel themselves into the sky with a single leap. In making such claims, paleontologists benefit from having little understanding of the physics, aerodynamics, and physiological principles involved in flight.

Several variables must be considered when determining whether something can fly: the flyer’s weight, wingspan, power output, aerodynamic form, static and dynamic balance, and the density of the surrounding air are among the most critical. The explanations offered by paleontologists fall far short of addressing these requirements. Nothing in flight physics, aircraft design, or experiments with RC models of pterosaurs supports the idea that a reptile the size of a small recreational airplane could fly in present-day atmospheric conditions.

6. The Enormous Flying Birds of the Mesozoic Era Are Not Dinosaurs

For nearly a century, paleontologists placed numerous species into vague, catch-all categories because they did not know how to classify them. These species had wings, asymmetric flight feathers, and many other bird-like features. Yet paleontologists found it unimaginable that they were flying birds, as they were far too large, and their wings appeared unusually small. How could they admit to the public that they had yet another major scientific paradox they could not solve? Finally, they came up with a solution: these were not large flying birds; they were feathered dinosaurs.

It is understandable why paleontologists would resist identifying these creatures as flying birds: based on the assumption that the Mesozoic atmosphere had the same density as today's, according to flight physics, flight would be impossible for such massive birds. As a result, paleontologists have proposed increasingly far-fetched alternative uses for these wings, suggesting they were used for courtship displays, thermoregulation, egg protection, balancing while running, catching insects, or brooding behavior. But this approach ignores a fundamental biological reality: throughout all of history, no vertebrate has ever evolved wings for any purpose other than gliding or powered flight.

Once again, paleontologists lean heavily on the public’s willingness to “trust the experts” rather than question their claims - this time regarding the evolution of birds. But it doesn’t take a paleontology degree to recognize the numerous bird-like features - such as feathered wings - on fossils that paleontologists have mislabeled as dinosaurs. Nor does it require special training to see that their proposed evolutionary tree for birds is nonsensical - riddled with omissions, false inclusions, and species placed tens of millions of years out of order. The narrative being pushed is not just flawed - it’s a deliberate abuse of public trust.

The fossil evidence is overwhelming and conclusive: alongside the giant dinosaurs and massive flying pterosaurs, the Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era was also home to enormous flying birds.

7. Nearly Uniform Global Climate Paradox

Today, we experience significant temperature variations due to factors such as day and night, latitude, altitude, and seasons. However, this was not always the case. During the Mesozoic era - the age of dinosaurs - temperature variations were far less pronounced. The lower latitudes were not excessively hot, nor were the polar regions excessively cold. Most notably, there was little to no glaciation at the poles. Fossil evidence, including dinosaur remains and temperate vegetation found in high-latitude regions, supports the idea of a globally uniform - or nearly uniform - balmy climate during the Mesozoic era.

If we look further back in time to the Pennsylvanian and Permian periods, the Ice Age climate of those eras more closely resembled our present climate. Going back even further, however, we see another shift: ice disappears, and climates return to a greenhouse state, much like during the Mesozoic. Some scientists refer to these alternating climate states as "icehouse" and "greenhouse" climates.

Paleoclimatologists have developed simulations to model past climates, including the Mesozoic, using hypotheses like elevated CO₂ levels and changes in ocean circulation. However, even with extensive adjustments to variables, these models struggle to fully align with the known glaciation history over the past half-billion years. For instance, they often fail to account for the significant glaciations during the Pennsylvanian and Permian periods or accurately reproduce the transitions between icehouse and greenhouse climates. This suggests that the underlying assumptions and mechanisms driving these simulations are either incomplete or fundamentally flawed.

8. What Is the Source of Earth’s or Any Other Planet’s Atmosphere?

Science education can be incredibly unbalanced. While most everyone on the planet has heard hundreds of times that the trace amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide causes global warming, the vast majority of people are ignorant to the fact that our atmosphere is about 78% nitrogen. Likewise most people have no idea where the Earth’s atmosphere or its oceans came from, how these fluids may have changed over time, or how the Earth’s atmosphere is different from the atmospheres of other planets. How can there be intelligent conversations on these matters when there are huge gaps in fundamental knowledge?

The primary source of a terrestrial planet’s atmosphere is volcanic emissions, and the two most common gases released by volcanoes are water vapor and carbon dioxide. On Earth, the water vapor condensed to form the oceans. On Venus and Mars, the carbon dioxide accumulated in their atmospheres. So what happened to the carbon dioxide on Earth? And what happened to the water on Venus and Mars?

9. Why is Earth' Atmosphere So Unique?

In our solar system, planets fall into two distinct groups: the relatively small terrestrial planets near the Sun and the large gaseous planets farther away. Physics explains why this is so. Because the outer planets are much farther from the Sun, they are significantly colder, causing gas molecules in their atmospheres to be less active. As a result, these planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune - are able to retain all the gases in their atmospheres, including the lightest ones, hydrogen and helium. In fact, they hold on to such vast amounts of these elements that they are composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, forming massive gas spheres. In contrast, the inner planets, having lost these lighter gases, can only retain atmospheres composed of medium-weight gases - or, in the case of Mercury, no significant atmosphere at all. Due to geological activity and chemical reactions, the atmospheres of these terrestrial planets tend to be primarily composed of carbon dioxide, followed by nitrogen, argon, and other gases. The outer planets are all large gas giants made mostly of hydrogen and helium, while the planets closer to the Sun are terrestrial and have atmospheres dominated by carbon dioxide.

It all seems to make sense - except that Earth does not fit this pattern. Unlike its nearest neighbors, Venus and Mars, Earth’s atmosphere consists primarily of nitrogen and oxygen. Furthermore, despite being larger than Venus and experiencing greater tidal forces - factors that should pump greater volumes of volcanic gases into the atmosphere - Earth has a much thinner atmosphere than Venus. So, why is Earth’s atmosphere so different from those of other planets?

10. Many Aspects of Our Solar System Are Still Unexplained

Paleontologists are not the only ones who have struggled to solve the paradoxes that confront them. Planetary scientists have likewise failed to explain how Earth developed its unique atmosphere or why most of its surface is covered with water. This raises serious questions: How reliable is our current theory of planetary evolution if it cannot account for the most distinctive features of our planet or explain what made the Mesozoic environment capable of supporting giants?

Far from being a solved puzzle, our solar system still holds major unanswered questions:

• What truly heats Earth’s interior, and why doesn’t that explanation work for all planets and moons?
• What determines planetary spacing, and why is there an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter where a planet should be?
• Why is there no solid explanation for the varying densities of planets and moons?
• Why do Saturn and the other gas giants have rings? How did these rings form?
• Why are some planets and moons geologically active while others are geologically dead?

These aren’t minor details - they’re fundamental problems that challenge the assumptions of planetary science. Progress depends on scientists being curious, open to tough questions, and willing to revise their views when the evidence demands it. No matter how many probes we launch to gather evidence, science cannot advance if the scientific community refuses to reckon with findings that contradict current beliefs.

David Esker
M.S. Physics
College Physics Instructor
Resolution of the Large Dinosaur Paradox
Science of Flight Equations
Theory of Planetary Evolution
Author of DinosaurTheory

Science is an ongoing process of discovery. We do not know why our reality exists, we struggle in defining what is life, we do not know how the laws of physics came to be, or who set the values of the physical constants, but we are certain of one thing: our reality is rational.

Comments, Questions, and Answers

Selected comments and questions are given with the permission of the parties involved.