science

Dinosaurs may not have been as heavy as previously thought. Those are the words of scientists who found flaws in the models used to estimate weight:

"Palaeontologists have for 25 years used a statistical model to estimate the body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large extinct animals,” said Gary Packard, from Colorado State University, whose research will appear in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology this week.

“We have found that the statistical model is seriously flawed and the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed.”

In other words, dinosaurs are just as big – long and tall, that is – as the fossils have always told us, but the flesh on those bones may have been far less bulky than thought. To make that distinction in movie terms, an Allosaur at the cinema would cheer the speedy new Godzilla over the lumbering old one as a better depiction of saurian kind. (Well, a vastly oversized saurian, anyway.)

This is welcome news to me, as massive weight has been the bane of GULLIVER's attempts to apply "natural encumbrance" rules to dino designs. Read more...

I would have liked to hear the speech by the inimitable Steven Vogel on "Power from the People: Life When Muscle Was Our Main Motor", an overview of how biomechanics shaped the lives and work of our ancestors. The article at http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2007/02/archeological_biomechanics.ph... provides some interesting fodder for the dilettante game designer, though it's unfortunately brief.

Less sober: The Science of Godzilla, at http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2007/02/the_science_of_godzilla_... . The radioactive breath jet? It's all thanks to a plasma gland. Yep, a plasma gland. (How we know that, isn't answered.)