# Why are there no dinosaur-size land animals today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 10, 2017, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-dinosaur-size-land-animals-today/793226 "2017-08-10T05:18:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 91
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2017, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-dinosaur-size-land-animals-today/793226/91 "2017-08-13T23:07:34Z")
Okay, more of Firestone and West. They published their “theory” in the form of a mass-market book with the title The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes. Here is just a small sampling of their ideas, quoting from the book. (Spoilered for length.) 41,000 years ago, the initial burst from a nearby supernova reached Earth.: > [@](#): > > It was warm that night in Southeast Asia, too warm for a fire, but the tribe built one to roast the two deer they had killed that afternoon. At the edge of the rock shelter in the foothills of the mountains, some of the tribe members stretched out against rocks and others dozed while the meal cooked. They were tired; they had trotted for dozens of miles after trapping the deer. > > Suddenly, high in the sky, a star exploded soundlessly. The colossal flash filled the night sky, shining brighter than the full moon. Instantly alert, some of the startled hunters grabbed their spears and jumped to their feet. As the shocked tribe looked up, the brilliant light in the sky wavered and shimmered. Larger now than the moon, it radiated glittering spikes of multicolored light in all directions. Around the frightened tribe, the nighttime landscape lit up under the eerie flickering glow, causing shadows to shift, flow, and merge as if demons crawled among the bushes. Fearful, the hunters edged backward toward the shelter. > > The stellar rays damaged oxygen in the atmosphere to create ozone. Like the smell after a strong thunderstorm, ozone filled the air with its unmistakable and pungent odor. > > Colliding with atoms of the atmosphere at nearly the speed of light, the deadly radiation launched cascades of particles that lit up the atmosphere with weird electrical effects. Multihued auroras shimmered across the Southeast Asian skies in unprecedented displays, and nearly nonstop lightning flickered from cloud to cloud or leaped earthward. Thunder rumbled nearly continuously as the tribe watched the strange lightning flash across the horizon. > > Skilled as warriors, the men scanned the electrified sky looking for danger, but they confronted no earthly enemy—the true menace was beyond their senses. And it was unstoppable. For ten seconds, the intense radiation shot through their bodies and brains, and it was too much for some. A few dropped to the ground moaning; others quickly pulled the fallen ones into the shelter, but none of them would recover. The rest who were outside the cave moved quickly under the overhang, but most of them would not survive either. Because of the high altitude, the only ones that made it through were those in the cave who were shielded from the direct glare of the exploding star. The explosion happened while above the horizon in Southeast Asia and Australia, so it caused a megafaunal die-out there, but Europe and the Americas were fine. Then 34,000 years ago, the shock wave from the supernova hit the Earth: > [@](#): > > Across the Northern Hemisphere, inhabitants may have noticed more “fireflies” in the sky. The profusion of shooting stars striking the upper atmosphere was the result of the rain of cosmic ions and grains, rich in iron and titanium along with radioactive thorium, potassium, and uranium. The native people interpreted the shooting stars as a bad omen, and they were right. The flux of particles damaged the ozone layer, and although no one noticed, levels of harmful radiation began to creep higher. Over time, ultraviolet light and increasing levels of silent cosmic rays began to injure plants and animals, especially the weaker ones. > > Occasionally, the hypervelocity cloud kicked loose new waves of comets and asteroids, which, along with the dust and debris in the fast-moving cloud, produced impacts on Earth or aerial bursts in the sky. Most of the incoming debris was small and did little damage, but sometimes the objects were large enough to penetrate the atmosphere. Slamming into the ground, the oceans, or the ice caps, they exploded violently, sending out high-velocity microscopic shrapnel that was lethal to animals, plants, and people. Sometimes waves of debris collided with the Earth, producing multiple explosions, which devastated the herds of mammoths, bison, and horses beneath. Big Ed, the mammoth, was in one of those herds. The incoming grains were high in toxic metals and radioactive elements, so that some animal species began to suffer from radiation sickness and heavy-metal poisoning. The second round of extinctions was under way. Then there was the third wave of extinctions. I won’t quote the more lengthy descriptions of this, but at the moment of the supernova, giant chunks of silicates formed in its atmosphere and were tossed out in all directions. The chunks were miles across but less dense than a snowflake. Many of those chunks reached the Earth between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago. One of them, 300 miles across but less dense than styrofoam, exploded over the Canadian ice sheet at 70,000 miles an hour. That explosion is what wiped out the Clovis people and the lost megafauna in the Americas. It left no crater in Canada, but debris from it carved out all of the Carolina Bays and similar structures with different names. Also, all the meteorites recovered in the American Midwest through the efforts of H.H. Nininger (of various dense silicate, iron, and other types) are debris from this 300 mile wide snowflake. Also, all the gold and precious stone deposits in the middle of the US were debris thrown up from Canada by the atmospheric exploding snowflake, and the sky rained diamonds for months after the impact. (I’ve just barely skimmed over my ebook of this for these sample passages—some of those claims may not have appeared in the book but instead in reports in the credulous popular media, which published “news” articles on these ideas.) Oh, heck—I said I wouldn’t quote from this, but I’m quoting from this: > [@](#): > > Yelling in alarm, one of the men pointed a trembling finger at the crescent moon. As the group stopped and stared at the sky, a huge, silent fireball engulfed the moon’s dark upper-left limb. The explosion was brief but violent. Convinced that the gods were angry, the men and women ran hastily toward shelter in a series of small caves cut into a rock overhang. It was a critical choice that shielded them from the worst of the trouble that was racing toward them. At that moment, the densest part of the debris cloud of dustball comets began to collide with the solar system. Angling in from the northern sky, the lumpy cloud of cosmic debris slammed sideways into the plane of the planets. The tribe could not see it, but enormous silent explosions were ripping across Mars, Venus, and the other planets and their moons; the worst of the system-wide onslaught continued for many hours. > > At the same time, although invisible to those hunters, giant cosmic dustballs were plunging soundlessly into the flaming body of the sun. Instantly, writhing plumes of sun-stuff exploded as massive flares, some of them heading directly toward the Earth. Within minutes, high-energy solar particles were buffeting the upper atmosphere, sending colorful auroras twisting and arcing across the daytime sky. > > The shaman had never seen these sky-signs before, but, trying to hold down his rising fear, he knew they were bad. As the tribe nervously huddled in the rock shelter, he hurriedly recited incantations and tried to intercede with the gods, but it was too late. > > Scrambling backward like a crab, one of the tribesmen near the outside shouted in terror as he tried to squeeze farther under the overhang. Wedging his way inside, he repeatedly stabbed a finger at the sky, where an array of glowing blue-white comets now stretched from horizon to horizon. Growing larger every second, they streaked into the atmosphere, each one lighting up brighter than the sun. One dustball comet was more than 300 miles wide; others were nearly as big. Shimmering fiercely, the largest fireball was too brilliant to watch. It cast shadows that shifted rapidly across the back of the cave as the comet moved, forming silhouettes of the tribe that twisted over the rock wall like drunken dancers. > > Heated to immense temperatures by its passage through the atmosphere, the lethal swarm exploded into thousands of mountain-sized chunks and clouds of streaming icy dust. The smaller pieces blew up high in the atmosphere, creating multiple detonations that turned the sky orange and red across the horizon. Beyond sight of the tribe, the largest comet crashed into the ice sheet, instantly blasting a gigantic hole through the ice into Hudson Bay. Within moments, other comets exploded over Lake Michigan, northern Canada, Siberia, and Europe, as every northern continent took direct hits. > > The dazzling flash of the nearest explosion temporarily blinded some of the tribe. Others closed their eyes tight, but even then, the fierce light stung their eyes. Some held their hands up as shields, but the intense light illuminated their flesh with an orange glow, eerily outlining the bones in their hands. Most of them curled up and buried their heads to shut out the painful brilliance, but their skin began to blister from the intense glare and heat. Hastily, they pulled cloaks and blankets over their heads, mumbling frantic prayers to the angry gods. So, that’s your scientific credibility of Firestone and West right there. These people were crackpots spewing insane horseshit. If you really want to side yourself with them, that’s your choice, but that isn’t glory that you are covering yourself with. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-there-no-dinosaur-size-land-animals-today/793226)._