Bigger than big, stronger than strong

My nonfiction reading at the moment is Dinosaurs, Spitfires and Seadragons by Christopher McGowan, another of my $4 finds from when I lived just around the corner from the Book House in St Kilda.

Things from today's reading that have stuck in my mind:
-a brachiosaurus (approx 78 tons) would have weighed more than a Boeing 727 airliner (75.6 tons).
- a giraffe’s blood pressure is so high that it would rupture the blood vessels of any other animal, and it’s tight skin functions like the anti-gravity suits worn by pilots.
-a fifty-ton whale has an approx 200kg heart. Being aquatic, it is not subject to the same forces as a land walking animal and does not have to generate a very high blood pressure, so a fifty ton sauropod would have to have a heart about eight times heavier than a 50 ton whale – 1.6 tons.

This book a great megafauna primer, reminding you that as a specfic writer, you can’t just bung bits together and then upsize them if you want to concoct realistic gigantic creatures. Blood pressure alone makes it highly unlikely that sauropods raised their heads higher than their bodies or battled predators, so how unlikely is a Hydra? Or Ghidora? And lets not even start on flying turtles.

To my mind, for structural integrity, you can’t beat the Big G, who looks like a dumpy T-Rex:


For more Godzilla Haiku go to Samurai Frog