Question: If dinosaurs didn't go extinct, what did they do?
Answer: The big ones certainly disappeared in the global catastrophe of 65 million years ago, but small, evasive dinosaurs left many surviving descendants, "creatures that can be described as warm-blooded reptiles of a raptorial persuasion, although we more often call them birds," says Nigel Calder in "The Magic Universe." The idea of barnyard chickens being related to fearsome T. rex may seem a joke, until we remember that the tyrannosaurs ran about on two legs, as birds do, after hatching out of giant chickenlike eggs. And some of the small fast-running dinosaurs seem similar to flightless birds like ostriches.
Archaeopteryx, dated at around 150 million years ago, was crow-size with winglike arms and feathers but also had a toothy jaw and reptilian tail, perhaps an early ancestor of birds. Later came Microraptor from 125-130 million years ago, a small dinosaur suitable for evolving into a bird, snug in its feathery jacket and occupying a treetop niche out of reach of larger predators. Marshes, rivers and seas, shunned by the dinosaurs, soon became parts of the avian empire, too. "So be grateful at least that today's dinosaurs tread quite gently on your roof."
Question: Six beefy guys line up on one side, six on the other, 1,800 pounds vs 1,800 pounds, the total kinetic energy unloosed by each "wall of bodies" during the collision equivalent to a 1.5-ton pickup truck going 4.3 mph, or to 6 bullets from a .357 Magnum handgun. And it's not just hit on hit, force = ma but also body leverage and torque. Who are these big bruisers, and what's going on here?
Answer: They're the dozen or so offensive and defensive linemen going at one another during pro football action, says Timothy Gay, Ph.D., in "Football Physics: The Science of the Game." Actually, over an entire play of 5 seconds, each lineman could deliver 4.3 horsepower. Total kinetic energy estimated for all players on both sides is a whopping 40,000 horsepower-seconds for a game of 100 plays, or enough to lift the 1.5-ton pickup truck 87,000 inches into the air, or 1.4 miles!
Interestingly, says Gay, because of a 60 percent increase in player weight and 12 percent in top speed since 1920, total kinetic energy dumped into "the pit" has likely doubled, yet major injuries (concussions, broken legs) have stayed about the same, primarily owing to better equipment.
Question: Can you imagine the list of body parts that in some culture or other at some time or other have been "modified" for ritualistic, religious or cosmetic reasons?
Answer: Nose jobs, ear jobs, tongue and ear piercings, tummy tucks, tattoos, belly button "beautification," guy and gal accentuations, foot fancifications, steroid resculpting of the musculature — these barely scratch the surface, or the skin in this case, which has itself prompted many a face job, derma-therapy, depilatory application.
More culture-specific, says A.J. Jacobs in "The Know- It-All," were the head flattenings practiced by certain Indian cultures. The desired flat-head effect was achieved by fastening the infant's skull to the cradle board, or by placing a bag of sand against the forehead. Over the centuries, cultures have also used bands to squeeze the skull into an hourglass shape. Teeth have been chipped, blackened, carved with relief designs or had pegs put in them. Padaung women wear a 15-inch brass neck-stretch ring that pulls four vertebrae into the neck. And among the Mayan Indians who considered crossed eyes beautiful, these were induced in babies by hanging an object between their eyes.
It's the human body as a work-in-progress (regress?).
Send STRANGE questions to brothers Bill and Rich at strangetrue@compuserve.com, coauthors of "Can a Guy Get Pregnant? Scientific Answers to Everyday (and Not-So- Everyday) Questions," from Pi Press.